


tan lines

by deanpendragon



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Light Angst, M/M, Pining, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Summer, Training Camp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-18 12:31:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9385337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deanpendragon/pseuds/deanpendragon
Summary: Tsukishima always tries to lag behind, and Yamaguchi always tries to pull him along.





	1. SPF 45

In the summer, Tsukishima burns.

Tsukishima burns like coals beneath a campfire whereas Yamaguchi bronzes, quick and even, long limbs and taut skin dripping with summer sun. Sweat sparkles from twelve exhausted bodies on the grass. As it passes, a whisper of wind grabs at the hems of yellow jerseys. Tsukishima plucks a blade of grass from the dirt, the tallest in a particularly pigmented patch.

“I was at the top of the hill _first_ , Kageyama.”

“Were not.”

“Was so. Ask anyone.”

“It’s supposed to be a punishment, not a game,” drones Tsukishima, rolling the blade of grass between his forefinger and thumb.

“Not a game,” Kageyama pants, “a _competition_.”

Hinata interjects, “A competition that I won. Right, Yamaguchi?”

Yamaguchi lifts his hands in surrender, his breath coming back to him.

“Definitely not getting involved.”

“C’mon,” Hinata whines.

“Nope. Nope, nope.”

“He’d side with me anyway,” says Tsukishima.

Yamaguchi leans back onto his hands. His grin is easy, lazy, tired. Tsukishima places the mistreated blade of grass on his palm and flicks it. They both eye where it lands on Yamaguchi’s thigh.

“Thanks.”

The sun glitters from Tsukishima’s lenses. When Yamaguchi blinks, he sees their imprints.

“Free of charge,” Tsukishima replies.

He doesn’t get the words out before a breath of wind takes the gift. Yamaguchi watches Hinata and Kageyama’s shadows bleed onto the grass under their feet. Across the field, Sugawara and Daichi stand up, prompting the rest to do the same. Mind and bones heavy, Yamaguchi sinks into the dirt. Tsukishima’s proximity pins him in place. More shadows bleed darkly into the green grass as the others stand, scattered on the hill.

Yamaguchi eyes the pigmentation in Tsukishima’s fingertips—the faintest green from the sole blade of grass rolled between them.

_____

  
Heat invades the gym always, regardless of soft breezes that swing inside through sets of open doors. The back of Tsukishima’s neck is burnt pink. Yamaguchi ogles the color as they leave the court. He adds _nape of neck_ to his running list of places Tsukishima should apply supplementary sunscreen, his mind rolling over the others lest he forget: the tips of his ears, the bridge of his nose, under his eyes, the backs of his knees and hands.

The pink is cute but Yamaguchi misses Tsukishima’s paleness.

It shines so nicely from him; cool pale against warm blond, liquid gold beneath black frames. He could melt Yamaguchi in an ice storm. He thinks of pressing ice to Tsukishima’s sunburns. He ponders on a rushed intake of breath at the moment of contact. He sees drops of ice water slide over smooth, pink skin.

He doesn’t see the blur of an incoming volleyball until it’s deflected, spinning from Nishinoya’s forearms with a satisfying _pop_. The second-year whirls on him. He boasts a wide, prideful grin. Yamaguchi blinks back to life.

“Yamaguchi, you seriously lack a little something I like to call _situational awareness_.”

“Sorry, Nishinoya-san, thanks, I—”

“But you _are_ practicing your jump floats a lot,” Nishinoya continues, “so I’ll let it slide.”

“Really?” Yamaguchi wonders.

“For sure. Practice makes better, right?”

He peers past Nishinoya’s brunet spikes to where Tsukishima stands by the gym doors and steps into his sneakers.

“Better?” he repeats curiously.

Nishinoya nods. “Yeah, well, perfect can be really tricky.”

Yamaguchi nods back. He offers his teammate a bright grin in return, its wattage pathetic in comparison. Nishinoya spins on his heel and hops to join the others in the doorway. He grants Asahi a hard slap between his shoulders and the third-year groans, twisting to massage the abused spot. Yamaguchi stretches his hands out in front of him and watches a stray volleyball roll past his planted feet. He feels the weight of it on his palm. He sees it float.

Perfect is unattainable by nature, but Yamaguchi reaches for it still.

_____

  
“Back of your neck,” Yamaguchi mentions, slinging on his t-shirt.

Tsukishima turns over his shoulder to look at him. The fresh, familiar scent of sunscreen hangs around the room, empty save the two of them and Ennoshita and Narita at the corner diagonal. Tsukishima uncaps the bottle he holds with a soft click.

“Oh,” he says. “Thanks.”

“Sure thing, Tsukki.”

“This is getting annoying,” he tells Yamaguchi, unwinding forgotten athletic tape from his left ring finger. He squeezes out a dime-sized spot of white and marks the nape of his neck. His fingertips make slow, lazy circles. Watching them dizzies him, so Yamaguchi turns away. “Consider yourself lucky.”

He turns back. “Why’s that, Tsukki?”

“The sun kisses your skin,” Tsukishima elaborates, and his diction sends Yamaguchi’s mind reeling. “But mine, it bites. Hard.”

“Maybe it’s a love bite,” Yamaguchi offers, playful.

Tsukishima huffs his amusement—the kind of laugh he does only in the mornings, more air than anything.

“Doesn’t feel so lovely.”

“Yeah,” Yamaguchi agrees, “the sun’s kind of a dick.”

He gives Tsukishima’s sleeve a quick tug. Tsukishima sways his way.

“I’ll protect you from the big, bad sun. You can count on me.”

“Unless you’re SPF fifty, I don’t think so.”

“Forty-five, actually.”

“Damn,” deadpans Tsukishima, capping the bottle and dropping it into his duffel bag.

_____

  
The team captains run the field behind the gym building. The Fukurodani and Nekoma captains remain outliers. The former zags crazily, hither and thither while the latter sprints a beeline in his wake, mounted hair impossibly dark under the warm orange tones of the setting sun. Daichi runs behind them with the others, perfect form, rigid with a sense of duty. Their heavy steps pack the dry dirt.

Yamaguchi stands in the doorway and watches. Fresh air cools the sweat on his face. Nearby, Hinata and Kozume lean against the outside of the building, the electronic glow from his PSP washing out their faces. Hinata jitters at his side. His eyes flick up to the captains as they rush by. He wants to run, too.

Yamaguchi could run. He’ll ask to join him in a lap around once Kozume retreats. If they wait much longer, they may leave late enough to hear the bullfrogs by the pond at the edge of the property.

“Hi,” lilts a voice behind him. “You’re from Karasuno, aren’t you?”

Yamaguchi jolts and turns. He stares up at emerald and silver, mouth parted. He nods.

“How tall are you? Five-eleven?”

“Just about,” Yamaguchi answers, impressed.

“I’m pretty good at that, you know. Will you help me stretch?”

Looking up at Lev, Yamaguchi flounders.

“You’re the tallest guy left in the gym. And I know Kenma-san is around here somewhere, but he’s kind of short, even if we are on the same team. And Yaku-san—he’s our libero—but he’s _definitely_ too short,” Lev confides, leaning closer. “Don’t tell him I said that. So will you help me stretch? I'll help you, too.”

Yamaguchi’s subsequent laugh is genuine.

“Okay. Sure thing.”

A minute later, he feels the rumble of Lev’s voice where his knee presses to his back.

“You’re a first-year, right? Like me?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Isn’t it _exciting_?”

Yamaguchi moves to Lev’s other side.

“What d’you mean?”

“I mean this whole thing,” Lev answers, fists balling at his sides when he should have them flat on the floor between his legs. Yamaguchi doesn’t correct him. “I mean standing on the court and playing, getting to hit the ball, how fast it all is. Isn’t it the best?”

“I, um—I don’t really get to be on the court, actually,” he admits quickly. “I’m not a regular.”

Lev turns over his shoulder, green eyes bright under gym fluorescents.

“Oh, I got it. But you will be, right?”

Yamaguchi eases off. “I’ll be what?”

“You will be a regular, right?” Lev supplies effortlessly. “Isn’t that why you’re practicing so late?”

On the court farthest from them, Sugawara sets Ennoshita a steady toss. The ball skims the white band of the net and slams to the floor. The boom reverberates in the bare gym and Lev scoots around on long limbs to face Yamaguchi, grinning simply. Yamaguchi grins back.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he assures. “I will be.”

_____

  
Hinata and Lev push him farther than he wants to run, but whether he is surpassed in height or stamina, Yamaguchi is determined not to fall behind. Most players stay awake despite how the sun dips behind the gym. Groups congregate in hallways and open rooms but mostly outside; Hinata and Lev join the crowd seamlessly like it’s the easiest thing in the world, ears perked at the boisterous story Bokuto regales from where he sits cross-legged on the grass. At the edge of the crowd, Yamaguchi stands idle. The thrum of voices is constant, concurrently comforting and clamorous.

He heads inside.

Karasuno’s borrowed room holds only Tsukishima, pink nose in a softcover book. Yamaguchi kneels by him. His overworked leg muscles smolder from the stretch as he scans the page Tsukishima analyzes—a rigorous map and key.

“Tsukki,” he murmurs.

“What?” Tsukishima answers without looking up.

“Hi.”

“Have you been running?”

Yamaguchi sits. “How’d you know?”

“You’re all red.”

“You haven’t even looked at me yet,” he notes.

“Your breathing is off.”

Tsukishima looks at him then, eyelids heavy over a placid stare.

“Oh,” breathes Yamaguchi. “I went with Hinata and that Russian guy from Nekoma—Lev.”

Tsukishima turns the page in his book. “Oh.”

“I heard the bullfrogs by that little pond. They were so loud, Tsukki.”

“It’s a new moon,” he explains.

Yamaguchi hums. Tsukishima’s glasses perch on the very tip of his nose. He’s too busy with parchment and ink to fix them. Yamaguchi reaches out and, gentle and slow, presses them further up the bridge of his nose. He drops his hands into his lap, proud for being useful. Tsukishima hums his appreciation. Yamaguchi files it away and eyes the mats that line the room. They lie in disarray, twisted blankets strewn about and pillows half-out of their cases. His own is no different. Even as he sits upon it, Tsukishima’s mat is the neatest.

“We could go down there—just me and you,” Yamaguchi mentions.

“Everyone is out.”

“You could hear how loud they are, Tsukki, firsthand.”

“I’m going to bed,” Tsukishima says.

He shuts his book with an air of finality. Though right next to him, Yamaguchi is oceans away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments and kudos are rad yo


	2. intricacies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pardon me as i get really sappy for a sec OTL
> 
> if you're reading this, skimming over this or even just thinking about reading this, just know that i really appreciate it, appreciate YOU with all my heart. and that goes double for those of you that care enough about my writing to follow me on tumblr, too. and that goes TRIPLE for people who are subscribed to me on ao3 and get emails when i post new stuff. i can't even wrap my mind around that. so to all my amazing one-time readers and my beloved returning readers, thanks so much. i wish i could do more for you but all i can really do is write, write, write. bc i love it. and you.
> 
> K SORRY HAPPY READING

“Yamaguchi. Um—Yamaguchi?”

Yamaguchi blinks out of his sticky morning haze. Sun beams through the open curtains on the far side of the room and casts over them—he and Asahi, who kneels at the side of his mat with an enormous hand on his shoulder. If anything, the gentle touch makes him drowsier. Yamaguchi sits up. 

“Everyone’s downstairs already. Sorry to wake you up. Nishinoya offered, but I knew I had to make that, uh, not happen. So here I am. Sorry,” Asahi says again. 

“It’s fine, really,” Yamaguchi insists blearily. “Thanks for getting me.”

“You’re kind of a heavy sleeper, huh?”

Last night, he could hardly be described as sleeping at all. Though exhausted, sleep crept out of reach. It hid in the corner and every time Yamaguchi turned onto his side, it skittered up the wall, making the distance between them that much greater. Twelve sets of lungs in the room, but Yamaguchi couldn’t get Tsukishima’s breathing out of his ears.

“Apparently,” he replies.

He throws his arms above his head with a yawn. Asahi grants him a genuine grin.

“I’ll change. I’ll be downstairs in a minute, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks, Azumane-san.”

At the door, Asahi turns back.

“Yamaguchi,” he wonders, “do you always sleep like that?”

“Huh?”

“The pillow.”

Yamaguchi looks down at the pillow by his side. Its pastel yellow case holds wrinkles from his arms, wound tightly around it. He runs his fingers over the material to rid of them. His stare slides to Tsukishima’s mat, his pillow of pale blue fluffed perfectly.

“I have no idea, to be honest.”

_____

  
Yachi waves at him from the table of managers by the door of the cafeteria. Yamaguchi waves back. He scuttles on when her greeting prompts the attention of the rest of the girls, their smiles soft and tired, their silk hair twisted up into ponytails and buns.

Tsukishima looks soft, too; his sharp edges dulled by sleep and frowning quietly where he sits across from Hinata and Kageyama, an unamused bystander to their harmless quarreling. They break their banter to throw Yamaguchi a quick greeting before pressing on. At the other end of the table, Nishinoya points his chopsticks at an appalled Tanaka. Their voices are lost in the rustle of the room. Tsukishima pushes his empty tray to his other side when Yamaguchi sits next to him.

“You look pinker today, Tsukki.”

“Sunburn becomes me,” Tsukishima sighs morbidly, resting his chin in his hand.

“If we _won_ ,” Kageyama interjects, “we wouldn’t have to be in the sun so much, running and shit.”

“You’d be outside running anyway,” chirps Hinata.

“So would you. And the rest of us. Just not Tsukishima.”

“We won’t win. Especially with your quick on the fritz,” says Tsukishima.

“Did he just say _fritz_?” Kageyama asks.

“Did he just kind of compliment us?” adds Hinata.

“We’ll win eventually,” Yamaguchi proclaims. “Once we get all of Karasuno’s bugs sorted out.”

Tsukishima stares at him. “Unlikely.”

Yamaguchi subdues his need to bristle.

“And then you won’t have to be in the sun so much,” he finishes.

Shrugging noncommittally, Tsukishima splays his hands on the table, an invitation for Yamaguchi to covet them.

“Hey,” he asks, still staring, “do I always sleep hugging my pillow?”

Tsukishima curls his fingers so his knuckles rest lightly on the tabletop.

“Occasionally,” he answers.

_____

  
All the sunscreen in Saitama can’t keep the sun from Tsukishima’s skin.

Since they were small, this has been the case. Yamaguchi recalls sweltering summer mornings stood on the sizzling sand, fidgeting while Tsukishima’s mother patted her son down with enough sunscreen to fill his favorite red pail. It was always twenty minutes before they could hurry to the shore and build their castles in peace. Tsukishima’s sand turrets were never lumpy like Yamaguchi’s. Yamaguchi always suggested that he stick to digging the moat. But Tsukishima would have none of that.

Yamaguchi has been hyperaware of Tsukishima’s necessary sunscreen habits ever since he pressed his lips to his cheek when they were eleven and Tsukishima went home with a kiss-shaped sunburn, Yamaguchi having effectively and accidentally displaced the lotion. It took four days to fade.

To Yamaguchi, the scent of sunscreen means freedom. It means innocence; youth, of which he is still in the midst and hangs onto for dear life as it tries to shake him loose. Sunscreen means summertime and Tsukishima, sitting cross-legged on his bed with cool blue dripping down his hand because Tsukishima doesn’t enjoy popsicles, not really, but he takes them time and time again because Yamaguchi offers. 

Yamaguchi has always loved the smell of sunscreen, even before he knew why.

_____

  
“What’d you falter for? You could’ve gotten that.”

“It’s freaky when you pay close attention to me.”

“I pay attention to the _ball_ ,” snaps Kageyama, “and you could’ve gotten it. I know you can move faster than that.”

“Do you?” Tsukishima challenges.

“Yeah.”

“Then it’s the only thing you _do_ know. Besides, we got the point, didn’t we?”

On the sidelines, Sugawara tuts reproachfully. Yamaguchi teeters next to him.

He loses himself momentarily in the myriad of calls and whistles, so many clicking gears, so much unity and sheer _drive_ on all sides that Yamaguchi smells it, _feels_ it even as his own skills wait on standby. He swears he smells sunscreen, too, but the scent scatters when he shakes his head. Colors twirl hypnotically as the ball rolls under the net—white, green, red, white, green, red, white. Kageyama stops it. He bounces it once with a sharp slap.

Charged by the atmosphere in the gym, Yamaguchi buzzes.

Kageyama palms the volleyball in one hand and drops his arm to his side. He falls back to the service line. Yamaguchi holds his breath. Kageyama’s serve is pure power, embossed with strength and confidence and though he fumbles for these in the dark, Yamaguchi remains empty-handed. He offers strategy in their stead. Even his hold on that wavers, though, so Yamaguchi attempts a firm, consistent grip until his knuckles drain white.

The ball soars from Kageyama’s palm with resonance. Yamaguchi clenches his fists. The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Electric envy zips through him, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He wonders how Tsukishima deflects all this palpable energy; negates it or redirects it like a lightning rod. 

When Sugawara’s arm brushes his, Yamaguchi wonders if he gets a static shock.

_____

  
The watermelon is satisfyingly sweet, squishing over tongues and lodging black seeds between fervent teeth.

“Between you and me, Yamaguchi,” Nishinoya insists with a full mouth, “I thought tossing would be _easy_. Kageyama deserves a lot more credit.”

“I think we credit him the appropriate amount,” says Tsukishima.

A segment of watermelon rind dangles at his side, pinched between his forefinger and thumb.

“There’s this special sound, y'know, when I actually get the toss right.”

“I know what you mean,” Yamaguchi tells him. “There’s a certain _thud_ when I hit a good serve.”

“There is?”

“Definitely. I know it by heart.”

Tsukishima pulls his gaze from the ground to look at him. The green rind crinkles in the grass when it falls from his fingertips and after he picks it up, Tsukishima walks off. Yamaguchi traces the curves of the six on the back of his practice jersey.

“Do you guys want more?”

He and Nishinoya turn to the sparse platter of watermelon slices brought around by one of the managers.

“Hey,” she says, holding a slice out to Yamaguchi, “you’ve got freckles, too!”

Yamaguchi fingers them at their mention. “Oh, yeah.”

“We’re twins,” she tells him cheerily. “But I like the pattern of yours more than mine.”

Dot clusters splash densely over the highest points of her cheeks, concentrated but faint, as if camouflaging under Yamaguchi’s scrutiny. His own lie dark and scattered. He forgets they exist between mirrors or select times when Tsukishima looks at him like he looks at the final problem on an assignment that he can’t seem to solve.

“Thanks, um—I like yours, though,” Yamaguchi insists.

Her beam is friendly and warm. “Right back at you, Karasuno. Do you want the last piece?”

Yamaguchi nods and takes the watermelon from her fingers. Her nails are each painted a different color: yellow, gray, green, purple, silver. She pushes her long, tan ponytail behind her shoulder with the back of her hand.

“Thanks a lot,” Nishinoya chirps for the both of them.

She gives them a yellow thumbs up and carries the platter off, empty save swirls of pink juice and some seeds. She walks past Tsukishima. He talks with Fukurodani’s setter; they exchange calm words and gold and silver stares. Nishinoya claps a hand on Yamaguchi’s shoulder.

“Wow,” he utters thoughtfully, “maybe I need some freckles.”

“Maybe, Nishinoya-san.”

“Seriously, do you always get girls' attention because of them?”

Yamaguchi huffs a laugh. “Never, ever, ever. This is an isolated incident, I swear.”

Nishinoya winks at him and lilts, “Sure.”

_____

  
Plagued by exhaustion so complete that it’s looped around to restlessness, Yamaguchi blinks at the ceiling. There’s a quick shuffle on the other side of the room as someone shimmies further into their blanket. Yamaguchi does the opposite and tosses his to the side. He overheats, suddenly.

Kinoshita neglected to shut the blinds fully and as a result, moonlight sneaks through them. It creeps between Kageyama’s feet, projects across Nishinoya’s midsection, beams over Asahi’s shoulders and finally, leaks into Tsukishima’s hair. It glows, radioactive.

The rectangle of light stops short of Yamaguchi. He turns onto his side to face it. If he stretches his arm, his hand just grazes it, the pale glow cutting across the tips of his fingers. He curls them all but his forefinger into his palm and notices how the shine highlights the ridges in his fingertip, the peaks and valleys, the clandestine intricacies of the smallest, brightest part of him.

He shifts his focus further, to Tsukishima. He watches Yamaguchi with weary interest.

He blinks. Yamaguchi blinks back. Someone nearby sniffles.

Tsukishima lifts his hand from beneath his blanket and, with the utmost delicacy, places the tip of his index finger on Yamaguchi’s. Both of their stares slide to the single point of contact. Voyeuristic moonlight glares from the back of Tsukishima’s hand. It washes out any pink undertones and the ridges that constitute their fingerprints fit together—the not so clandestine intricacies of the smallest, brightest parts of them.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3


	3. molten

“Tsukki, I was going to practice my receives.”

Yamaguchi arranges himself so his shadow falls over Tsukishima where he sits folded into himself on the grass. He considers it a favor.

“Okay.”

“Do you want to do it with me?”

“I’m tired.”

Yamaguchi toes at the dirt. “Me too.”

“So I’m going in,” Tsukishima finishes.

“We don’t have to practice,” Yamaguchi replies, “we can just bump the ball back and forth.”

“What would be the point of that?”

He shrugs. Tsukishima rises on long, lean limbs to stare down at him. Yamaguchi eyes the irritated spots of pink on his nose, right beneath the bridge of his glasses. Aware that Yamaguchi stares, he turns away. 

“I’m going back into the gym,” Yamaguchi tells him resolutely.

“I know.”

“So if you change your mind,” he trails off.

Tsukishima nods. Yamaguchi turns, feeling out of place like a middle puzzle piece jammed into the very corner of the frame.

“Don’t exhaust yourself again,” Tsukishima tells his back. “I get tired just watching you.”

_____

  
Yamaguchi and Hinata polish their receives on the middle court of the first gym building, wedged between Shinzen and most of Nekoma.

“Switch every ten?” Hinata offers.

“Deal. Okay, here.”

Yamaguchi swats the ball at him and Hinata swoops to get it. He sends it twirling through the air and back to its source. He glows under Yamaguchi’s short, distracted praises and, preoccupied, they pass ten without a second thought. The cacophony of the gym is therapeutic in its familiarity—rubber squeaks on glossy hardwood, smacks of palms against volleyballs, enthusiastic shouts of protest and success.

At seventeen, they switch.

His spikes have more power than Hinata’s do, Yamaguchi notes as he receives them unsteadily. He shakes his head to scatter the thought. In terms of usefulness, he and Hinata are on different planes. Even with his highest, most concentrated leaps, Yamaguchi can’t reach. He’ll quit volleyball altogether before he asks Hinata to toss a rope down for him.

“Kageyama’s been practicing on his own a lot, hasn’t he?”

“A _ton,_ ” Hinata replies, exasperated.

“Sorry,” Yamaguchi says, bumping the ball in an arc over Hinata’s head.

“It’s nothing. I mean, what he has to practice and what I do are completely different right now, anyway.”

“I guess so. I didn’t think of it like that.”

“Is that why you and Tsukishima aren’t practicing together?”

Yamaguchi plants his feet. “I think Tsukki went to sleep.”

“Huh? I just saw him go into one of the other gyms, though.”

He loses momentum. The ball drops hollowly from his arms and rolls across the floor, bumping against Hinata’s shoe. Hinata scoops it up and twirls it between his fingertips.

“I think so, at least. I only ran past. The third gym, I think it was, with Nekoma’s roosterhead captain and a couple Fukurodani guys,” he reports. “You okay, Yamaguchi?”

Yamaguchi blinks at the orbs of light sunken into the gym floor from the fluorescents above.

“Yeah. Yeah, totally. Sorry.”

“Tsukishima’s so lucky,” Hinata growls, pressing the ball to his flushed forehead. “Whatever he’s doing, he’s going to get really good at it, working with those guys. Maybe I should see if they’ll let me come, too.”

Yamaguchi swipes his sneaker over the floor with a sharp squeak.

“I hope so, Hinata.”

_____

  
The full, heavy scent of meat stomps from the cafeteria and up the stairs. It barges through the door of Karasuno’s borrowed room, left ajar. Yamaguchi’s stomach growls. He wants to join the others but he’s rooted to the floor, watching Tsukishima frown at the bottle in his hand.

“Three days. It’s been three days,” he muses with disinterest, “and it’s nearly empty.”

“Use it more sparingly, Tsukki.”

Tsukishima’s frown deepens. He lifts his arms between them in a presentational manner.

“Yamaguchi. This _is_ me using it sparingly.”

His forearms glare a vibrant red.

“Geez,” hisses Yamaguchi.

“Yeah. Now hold my wrist.”

Yamaguchi clutches Tsukishima’s left wrist with both hands, fingers avoiding the shadows of blue veins like he intends to read something within their curves and intersections. If he stepped forward, he could press Tsukishima’s hand flat on his stomach. Tsukishima twists his arm in Yamaguchi’s grip until his elbow points to the ceiling.

Tsukishima’s arms are double-jointed. Yamaguchi huffs a laugh.

Tsukishima grins wickedly. “Remember how much that used to scare you when we were little?”

“Yeah, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi breathes, loving him. “I definitely remember.” 

_____

  
Yamaguchi hears Tsukishima’s voice buried beneath a collection of others; bits of gold in a shallow pan of pebbles and grit. Light spills through the open door and onto the steps and walkway. Yamaguchi stands at its blurred edge.

In the third gym, Tsukishima practices with some of the best players at the training camp. Petals of pride and adoration blossom so quickly inside Yamaguchi he feels they’ll smother him if it weren’t for the way inadequacy washes in and rots them with its toxicity, shrivels them before he discovers their potential.

Tsukishima listens avidly. Yamaguchi tells by the hunch in his shoulders. When he raises his arms—“In front of you, in _front_ ,” instructs Kuroo—Yamaguchi sees the familiar red that tattoos them. He wants to press his calloused fingers to the color, slow and gentle, gentle and slow, just to remind himself of the pale beneath when he takes them away.

Tsukishima’s focus is palpable. It hangs in the air like humidity after rain, like smoke after fire. It’s precious in the same way gems are, cut and polished until sparkling. And as much as Yamaguchi wants to reach out and pocket it, he leaves it be.

_____

  
“Fifty in the morning, fifty at night.”

Hinata scoffs, “You’re messing with us.”

“You serious, Kageyama-san?” supplies Lev, perched on his hands and toes.

“That’s right,” grunts Kageyama, “you’re a middle blocker, too.”

“Yeah, but _fifty_?”

“The stronger your arms, the better your set up. Or in your case, your block.”

“Fifty!” squawks Hinata. “Can you believe that, Kenma?”

Kozume looks up from his phone but his fingers continue to move. He pushes his hair behind his ear and scoots further from the four of them like their energy is contagious and he’d hate to catch it. When he looks back down, his hair falls into his face again.

“I believe it,” he says. “Kuro does the same.”

“ _Fifty_ ,” Lev parrots.

“Technically one hundred,” Yamaguchi corrects.

They start on Kageyama’s count. Kageyama always dumbfounds Yamaguchi with his physical ability, his strength and determination and the way he's able to steel himself when it matters most. He leaves no room for himself to diminish. He leaves no room for himself to waver.

Consistently, Hinata is the one that pulls him loose. Without that, Yamaguchi frets Kageyama would tighten so intensely that the faintest flick would topple him and he’d shatter. If Karasuno’s control tower shatters, it would crack the foundation underneath. They would fall.

Kageyama sits on his knees once he finishes.

“Come on, Hinata."

“I’m almost—almost done!” Hinata huffs, indignant.

“Strength is the most important thing for reliable blocks,” Kageyama lectures.

He gives Lev a dutiful nod when he finishes second.

“And nearly everything else,” he adds. “Yamaguchi, tell that to Tsukishima.”

Yamaguchi collapses onto his chest. “Why me?”

“If I tell him, he’ll do the opposite.”

“Get weak on purpose?” Lev wonders.

“Chop his arms off altogether?” puffs Hinata, collapsing too.

Lev sits up. “Can’t people live for a while even after that?”

A single tone chimes from Kozume’s phone. He quiets it instantly and looks up.

“That’s a chicken,” he informs flatly. “You’re thinking of a chicken, Lev.”

Yamaguchi laughs until he’s lightheaded, squinting up at the dizzying gymnasium lights.

_____

  
The final practice matches of the day are played with vivacity unparalleled. They exhaust themselves so sleep comes easier, so even after bowls and platters of steaming food, they stay hungry for tomorrow and to run the court anew.

“Nice one touch, Tsukishima!”

“It should’ve been shut out,” barks Kageyama, turning away.

Tsukishima doesn’t allow himself a response. He shrugs the tension from his shoulders. Yamaguchi stares and wonders if the material of his kneepads chafes the pink skin underneath. On the other side of the court, Shinzen flares with upwards of energy, bouncing on their toes like they can’t expel it quick enough. The next spike slams between Tsukishima and Hinata’s outstretched arms.

“Damn it. Are you even paying attention?” 

“Are _you_?” asks Tsukishima. “He was going to do a cross. He switched to a straight at the last moment.”

Tsukishima’s posture is rigid, shoulders hunched like a taut bow. Kageyama huffs.

“You should be ready for that,” he directs after a moment.

Shinzen’s subsequent spike rips its way between Tsukishima’s forearms, but not before the ball batters his glaring sunburn, raw and red. Tsukishima retracts his arms to his chest. He stays quiet, shoulders rising with pacifying breaths.

The point wins Shinzen the game.

“Hey, is he okay?” wonders Sugawara, pressed to Yamaguchi’s side.

Yamaguchi releases his sore lip.

“Yeah. Yeah,” he lies.

He knows Tsukishima hates the attention.

_____

  
“Just ignore Kageyama,” murmurs Yamaguchi.

“I do.”

“Sugawara-san told me he’s just tense because of that new toss he’s trying to learn. He can't get it right.”

Tsukishima kneels on the floor with his back to him and rummages through his duffel bag. Yamaguchi steps further into the room. The rambunctious shouts from downstairs negate the silence. Tsukishima pulls out a worn book and sets it by his side.

Yamaguchi takes another step. “How are your arms?”

“They sting.”

Yamaguchi’s anger sparks and sizzles and flares but Tsukishima’s burns quietly. It cools and hardens. It solidifies, and Yamaguchi isn’t strong enough to lift it. Tsukishima stands. He passes Yamaguchi to sit on his knees on the floor. The scent of sunscreen swirls around him and Yamaguchi is enveloped so suddenly within it, so completely that he feels as if he’s just buried his face in the crook of Tsukishima’s neck. But it’s simply not warm enough. He opens his eyes. He goes to him.

“At least we’re here together,” Yamaguchi tells him. “At least I’m here, too.”

Tsukishima glares somewhere beyond his book but turns the page anyway.

“What difference does it make?” 

The air conditioning clicks on. The room whirs and hums.

Yamaguchi digs his hands into the tangible sensation of plummeting, desperate for a tight grip. He wants to ask Tsukishima if he’s serious. He wants to grab his book and throw it against the wall and then go get it for him. He wants to climb into his lap. He wants to shake him by his shoulders and watch him wince because he prods his sunburn.

But Yamaguchi never gets what he wants. He leaves the room, still sinking.


	4. chicken wire

Fukurodani’s freckled manager stands on the staircase landing and fumbles with her jacket sleeve. The halls are bare. A ruckus floats up the stairs with the aroma of hot food and Yamaguchi eyes the gray patch on the back of her draping jacket, a hungry twinge in his stomach.

“Shit,” she swears under her breath.

“Is, uh—everything okay?”

She whips her head up to look at him.

“Oh,” she says pleasantly. “Hey, twin.”

“Yamaguchi,” he tells her.

“Hey, Yamaguchi. Everything’s cool, it’s just that,” she pauses to yank her sleeve up to her elbow and rolls it tight so it’ll stay, “this muscly guy on my team always borrows my sweatshirts and then stretches them out so they’re shot to hell. See?” She waves the loose sleeve that dangles past her hand. “But it’s not your problem. I can manage it.”

“Because you’re a manager?” Yamaguchi asks, grinning.

“Exactly, my friend.”

“Good luck.”

“Suzumeda,” she exchanges, pushing up her sleeve again, “but my friends call me Suzu.”

The clouds shift and brilliant morning sunlight invades the hallway. Her steel eyes draw it in. Yamaguchi feels light, fresh like he’s bitten into a mint; like he’s rolled down the back window after endless miles of heat and asphalt. 

“Have you tried rubber bands? Or hair ties?”

“Huh?”

“To keep your sleeves up,” Yamaguchi clarifies, tugging at his own.

She points at him with a chipped green fingernail.

“That is _ideal_. Are you getting breakfast?”

Yamaguchi nods. “Yep, headed there now.”

“Radical,” she replies breezily, “then let’s go, Yamaguchi.”

Her beige ponytail flips over her shoulder when she spins on her heel. She pushes both stretched sleeves to her elbows one at a time with vigor and hops down the stairs, glancing back to see if Yamaguchi follows. She grins upward, childlike.

“You can help me find some rubber bands!”

_____

  
The afternoon sun borrows its passion from the very core of the earth, it seems, harsher this day than yesterday and each one before it. Yamaguchi hopes Tsukishima marked with sunscreen the places he usually forgets like his ankles and the back of his neck. His head nags him to ask, to remind, to fret. But a sticky, nasty weight hangs on his thin frame. Burdened, he stays still.

Nishinoya sprawls on the grass in front of him. By his side sits Asahi, limbs corralled, knees pulled to his chest neatly, tidily like he expects to be packed into a box within the coming moments.

“I don’t tan,” announces Nishinoya, crossing his legs at the ankles. “It’s a curse.”

“I don’t think that’s what a curse is, Nishinoya.”

He reaches over and pushes Asahi’s sock down. Asahi pulls it back up.

“At least you don’t burn,” Yamaguchi supplies helpfully.

“He’s right. That’s something to be thankful for, isn’t it?”

Nishinoya uncrosses his legs. “Totally. Ryuu is like, the _god_ of tanning—him and Yamaguchi.”

“Me?” asks Yamaguchi.

“Yeah, you! You’re like a shiny penny.”

“It is a nice tan, Yamaguchi,” supplements Asahi, nodding humbly.

Tsukishima stands at the base of the hill. Hinata looks between him and Bokuto, his splash of wild orange hair swishing with his movements. He pushes it from his sweaty forehead with the heel of his palm. His bangs spike straight up. Bokuto cackles—the din cuts clear across the field—and Tsukishima looks away. He looks toward Yamaguchi. 

Yamaguchi stares back. He fastened a string between the two of them when they were twelve and he decided he did not want to lose him or be lost from him. That string tugs now. It tugs deep. It tugs from the very back of Yamaguchi’s chest, from the the notches of his spine.

Tsukishima only turns back when Bokuto claps a heavy hand on his shoulder.

_____

  
The sun refuses to relent even as it bobs atop the far-flung city skyline and slips hues of warm orange through unbolted doors and high windows. The color makes Yamaguchi drowsy. He longs to tear it open, crawl inside and sleep. He could sleep until Tsukishima came looking for him.

“Yamaguchi!” bellows Tanaka, bounding up to him.

“Hey, Tanaka-san.”

“Kinoshita bailed, so we need a sixth. You in?”

His drowsiness dissipates. “Yeah. Absolutely.”

To Yamaguchi, the three-on-three is more than that, more than practice, more than another way to wear himself out. He aims to show his teammates that he’s been playing since elementary school. He wants to stand on the court and mean it every single time, practice or nationals, he wants not to waver. He wants not to diminish.

Yamaguchi wants to bask in their strengths like sunlight— Sugawara’s fluidity, Hinata’s perseverance, Nishinoya’s fortitude, Asahi’s brute force, Daichi’s reliability, Tsukishima’s placidity—until he’s able to draw in even the most microscopic parts for himself, until their brilliance shines out of all the jagged cracks in his foundation. He will shine so bright that the others will shield their eyes. But for now, he flickers.

_____

  
Quick, directive shouts fling from the third gym as Yamaguchi passes.

He heads inside for the night and Tsukishima still practices. Yamaguchi wants to be proud but he just aches—a dry, hollow ache where something vital should be, like an organ. He presses an idle palm to his chest. A shadow swallows him. He turns.

Tsukishima looms in the open doorway, backlit by seraphic white light.

“Are you going in?” he asks.

“Yeah, Tsukki.”

“Okay.”

Tsukishima’s stare is downcast. Yamaguchi glances to his kneepads, pooled around his ankles.

“What?” he wonders.

“Your knees.”

Yamaguchi bends. In the faint, blocked light he sees their relative paleness. It’s exacerbated by shades of bronze around them, on Yamaguchi’s calves and just below the hem of his shorts. He digs the toe of his sneaker into the dirt and straightens.

“Tan lines,” Tsukishima murmurs, voice soft like a caress. “I don’t get those.”

“Too bad burn lines don’t count, Tsukki.”

He grins weakly.

“I’ll see you later,” Yamaguchi tells him.

“Yamaguchi,” says Tsukishima.

Yamaguchi stops, one leg cocked to turn away. “Yeah?”

A volleyball slams against the wall next to the door and Tsukishima flinches—a rare occurrence.

Bokuto shouts from inside, “Tsukki, do you _want_ to be the best blocker in Japan or not?”

“No,” Tsukishima calls flatly over his shoulder.

Yamaguchi feels the physical presence of a glitch. He’s trapped inside an installation his current hardware does not support.

Tsukishima turns back to him. “I’ll see you later.”

He retreats into the gym and bright light falls over Yamaguchi once more. The doors remain open but Yamaguchi feels very much separate. He turns fully away and continues down the dark walkway, surrounded on all sides with wire and beams; pseudo-scaffolding. Hot sparks crackle in his gut.

He wonders when others started calling him that. The thought churns inside him, swirling around his head and dropping into his chest, sinking into his stomach where it catches fire a few times but never quite peters out.

Yamaguchi tugs at the hem of his shirt, feeling glitchy again. He thought Tsukishima’s name was something he unlocked years back, secretly, quietly, with a pillow pressed over the keyhole so no one heard the latch click. He thought only he had the key, carried proudly in his pocket always. But now it seems he’s left handfuls of copies on the table, shiny and inviting.

_____

  
Too wired to sleep, Yamaguchi takes laps around the main gym until the moon swings around the sky to perch on a shelf of stars. He runs until it’s so dark that he would have tripped over Kozume if not for the eerie electronic glow on his solemn face.

_Blip_ , insists the device in his hands, _blip bleep._

“Sorry,” Yamaguchi pants. “I didn’t see you.”

Kozume doesn’t look up. “This campus needs more lampposts.”

“Definitely."

Kozume shuffles his feet. The rubber soles of his sneakers scrape the pavement. Even the barest spots around him seem calmly occupied. Yamaguchi tugs at the fabric of his shirt and lets the night air cool his flushed skin. Kozume sits on the gym steps, a faint box of light on the walkway by his feet from the square window in the door at his back. 

Yamaguchi eyes the box as he asks, “What’re you doing back here?”

“Waiting,” answers Kozume.

“Oh.”

He pulls his game closer to his chest. Yamaguchi taps his fingertips together.

“Do you, um—do you want to run with me?”

Blue light flashes over Kozume’s small grin.

“You sound like Shouyou,” he says.

“Sorry.”

“I didn’t mean it as a bad thing.”

Yamaguchi grins too. “I think it’s more of a compliment than anything.”

Kozume hums his approval. His device hums back—three desolate beeps. Kozume hangs his head, crosses his legs and sets it safely in his lap. He pushes his hair behind his ear. The box of light on the pavement flickers when someone walks by the gym door.

“Well, see you later, Kozume-san.”

“Kenma is fine.”

“Okay. I’ll see you later, Kenma-san,” he replies. “I hope you don’t have to wait much longer.”

“Me either. See you.”

Yamaguchi hears the device chirp back to life as he continues on.

Folded into himself under the moon, Kozume effectively detaches. Yamaguchi admires his attached separation—his dedication to both his team and the quiet, void of the roiling spark that urges Yamaguchi onward through the dark. Kozume is Nekoma’s control tower, built brick by calculated brick. Yamaguchi himself is patched together with paperclips and chicken wire. 

But with every practice, his clumsy fastenings fortify. He doubts Tsukishima notices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kenma was waiting for kuroo to finish practicing bc kuroo borrowed a game from one of the ubugawa guys for him but hadn't had a chance to give it to him yet #themoreyouknow
> 
> comments and kudos are lovely! like you!


	5. flourish

The roll of athletic tape plunks to the floor for the third time.

Yamaguchi counts the wrinkles in his pillowcase, contemplating the stillness of the room despite the way both of them linger out of habit. The air conditioner purrs. Yamaguchi, languid from sleep, suspends himself within the white noise. His mat is still warm beneath his knees.

Tsukishima drops the roll of tape once more.

“Yamaguchi,” he murmurs.

Yamaguchi peeks over at him. “Do you want help?”

Tsukishima nods. Yamaguchi stands lazily and pads over to him, eyeing the way his blond hair lies flat against the side of his head because he hasn’t looked in the mirror yet. Sleep tugs at his features. It hoods his eyes and pulls his mouth into a perpetual pout. Yamaguchi wants to pin these details down in an album like photographs.

“Here,” he says and Tsukishima presses the roll into his palm.

“Thanks,” replies Tsukishima, meek. “I would, but—sunscreen.”

Yamaguchi breathes it in, nice and slow.

Tsukishima doesn’t have to tell him where. Yamaguchi coils the malleable tape around his right ring finger, his left pinky and both index fingers. He rolls twice over the raised scar on Tsukishima’s middle finger from when they were ten and his brother accidentally caught him with a fishhook. The backs of his hands are rosy but Tsukishima’s fingers remain pale—long and svelte, too. Yamaguchi’s breath hitches.

“What?” Tsukishima wonders, crowding closer.

Yamaguchi smooths down the edge of the tape on Tsukishima’s pinky to make sure it sticks.

“Nothing. It’s just,” he pauses with another hitch, “such nice hands.”

“So are yours,” says Tsukishima. “Capable of so much.”

He overturns his hand, Yamaguchi’s fingertips resting on his soft palm. They glide the slightest bit from the sheen of stubborn sunscreen that has yet to absorb. Yamaguchi’s heartbeat flicks against his eardrum, its rhythm inconsistent like summer rain on a windowpane. He pictures raindrops on the glass. They collect more as they slide, huge, glistening globs, lukewarm to the touch.

“Sorry.”

Yamaguchi looks up. “Tsukki?”

“I was frustrated. And I was wrong. Embarrassingly so,” Tsukishima tells him, staring unblinkingly at their hands. Yamaguchi’s heart beats in his fingertips. A flush smothers the sunburn on Tsukishima’s cheeks. “If you weren’t here…”

“You’d just hang out with the other friends you’ve made?”

He shakes his head. “I never make friends.”

“Then what am I?”

Tsukishima doesn’t answer. He tugs Yamaguchi closer by the string in his chest.

_____

  
“Yamaguchi! Have you seen Kageyama?”

“I think he’s with Ukai-san.”

Hinata slides down the wall and slumps next to Yamaguchi like a rag doll. Yamaguchi passes him his water bottle, doused in beads of condensation from the invasive summer heat. Soaked, it nearly slides from Yamaguchi’s grip.

“Did you want to practice with him?”

Hinata pulls the bottle from his mouth with a hiss and shrugs.

“I think I’m just used to it.”

“I know what you mean.”

“You, Yamaguchi?”

Yamaguchi nods. “It’s kind of weird to be knocked from a routine.”

“But kind of exciting too, right?”

“You would say that, Hinata.”

A contagious grin breaks over both their lips. They return Lev's enthusiastic wave from across the gym.

“I’m happy Kageyama’s practicing really hard, though.”

“You just wish it was with you?”

“Yeah. Maybe,” Hinata answers, voice teetering like a carnival horse.

He laughs at Yamaguchi when he jolts from a sudden spike, slammed hard on the court in front of them. Ubugawa groans. Fukurodani rejoices. Akaashi stumbles forward from the congratulatory slap Bokuto lands between his shoulder-blades.

“Kenma says the same thing,” Hinata goes on, “about Kuroo-san. Because he’s in the third gym all the time, right, practicing cool stuff with Bokuto-san and Akaashi-san and Tsukishima—well, you know that part.”

Yamaguchi thinks of Kozume sitting on the gym stairs in the dark. 

“It’s a good thing he’s got you, then, Hinata.”

Hinata gives a resolute nod, beaming. Both teams scatter from their respective benches and cover the court in preparation for the third set. Hinata squeezes his water bottle between his hands. Air whistles out the top. He reminds Yamaguchi of a searing tea kettle left atop a heat coil.

“It sucks to just have to _watch_ ,” he insists, legs jittery where they stretch out in front of him.

Yamaguchi replies flatly, “You have no idea.”

Hinata’s face falls, pitying, and Yamaguchi wishes he hadn’t said anything at all.

“Oh. Right. Sorry, Yamaguchi,” he apologizes. “I know this doesn’t mean a lot coming from me, but you’re getting _so_ awesome.”

“You really think that?”

“Totally, I totally do. I even heard Daichi-san and Sugawara-san talking about it this morning.”

Yamaguchi stares. “About _me_?”

“Yeah, you and about how much you’re practicing. And _growing_ —that’s the word they used.”

The spark in Yamaguchi’s chest rekindles. He singes the wood beneath him. 

“Watching all these other guys,” Hinata breathes, eyes shiny, “I mean, they’re cool and stuff, and I’m really lucky to train with them. But I’m proud to be with Karasuno.”

With Karasuno, Yamaguchi grows. He sprouts and grows and buds and blooms among the others, petals soft and unsure but very much alive, very much thriving. Belated, he climbs his way out from the underbrush. He soaks up every burning drop the summer sun offers. He sprouts. He grows. He buds. He blooms. He grows. He grows. He grows.

The sturdiest plants take longest to flourish. Tsukishima told him that once.

_____

  
“The key is _placement_.”

“I could’ve guessed that, Tsukki.”

“Then what if I said the key is _constituents chosen_?”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

Tsukishima snaps another thick blade of grass from its habitat.

“Stop moving so much,” he orders. “You’re messing me up.”

“It tickles, Tsukki.”

“I know. I’m almost done.”

He carefully adds the single blade of grass to the lengthening line. His thumbnail scrapes Yamaguchi’s tanned skin when he nudges a wayward piece back into place and Yamaguchi shivers, subdued enough as not to disturb Tsukishima’s work. From where he bows over his knee, Tsukishima looks up. Spidery lashes fan his eyelids. Yamaguchi eyes the curve of pink just below his hairline, mostly obstructed by Tsukishima’s shock of untidy blond kinks. Tsukishima looks down again.

“One more,” he reports.

He plucks the last piece from the ground with finality. He places the blade of grass just below Yamaguchi’s knee with incongruous precision, effectively closing his constructed line. Minimally, Tsukishima pulls back. He and Yamaguchi observe his efforts with tilted heads. Sweat plasters Yamaguchi’s bangs to his forehead and prevents them from falling into his eyes.

“Good job, Tsukki.”

“Thanks,” says Tsukishima. “That’s the most I’ve done all day.”

Yamaguchi barks a ridiculous laugh despite the mile run they’d completed minutes earlier; Karasuno’s punishment for a hard loss to Nekoma. Tsukishima’s grin is soft under the setting sun. Yamaguchi curls his fingers into his palms, tugging up handfuls of grass in the process.

“It’s hot,” Tsukishima complains.

“Yeah, we should probably go in.”

He reaches out to straighten a blade of grass above Yamaguchi’s knee that needs no straightening.

“Why?” he asks. “It’s just as hot in there.”

The whistles in the gym shriek their protests through the gaping doorway. 

“Tsukki, there’s a bug on you.”

Tsukishima stiffens. “You’re just trying to get me to go inside.”

“No, no—an ant. On your knee.”

Tsukishima unfolds his leg and promptly flicks the insect into the ether. He stares hatefully in its relative direction. Yamaguchi avidly plucks the cushy, cottony parts of Tsukishima from among the jagged shards because they remind him of when they were young. He pockets them, buoyant and downy like the fluff inside plush animals.

“Guys?” calls Ennoshita, his mop of black hair glaring from the doorway. “Are you coming?”

“Be right there, Ennoshita-san.”

Tsukishima stands but Yamaguchi remains on the ground, gaze fixed downward.

“Say bye to your masterpiece, Tsukki,” he tells him.

“Bye, masterpiece.”

Yamaguchi stands and impeccably organized blades of grass flutter from where Tsukishima used them to trace Yamaguchi’s tan lines. They fall away dramatically—regrettably. Tsukishima stares hard at the place over which they scatter.

“Could’ve sold it for millions,” he mutters, trailing Yamaguchi back to the gym.

_____

  
Yamaguchi has always lost time with Tsukishima. It twirls away from them, spinning like curls of smoke the same way hands orbit around the face of a clock. They can’t seem to keep track of it. Yamaguchi wonders if they’ll get it all back someday in the form of a never-ending, pink-skied afternoon.

Strings of sunsets fell quickly to dusk and Yamaguchi and Tsukishima missed their curfew time and time again, flashlights clutched in their tiny hands. Two white spotlights scattered across the grass, tree trunks, Tsukishima’s hardcover books as they bumbled along the edge of the forest. Yamaguchi cupped bugs in his hands with great care and Tsukishima checked them off, the same way he did with plants.

Tsukishima’s glasses slipped down his nose from the way he hunched over the diagrammed pages. Yamaguchi would have gently poked them back into place if his hands hadn’t been otherwise occupied by beetles, by slugs and spiders because Tsukishima didn’t want to touch them, inching away when Yamaguchi suggested he get a closer look at the patterns on their wings or exoskeletons.

His breezy disinclination was the only thing to compromise their elementary research. Yamaguchi was elated to provide the assistance he needed, to be the reason for the tick marks and hums of fond interest, the reason their mothers chewed their thumbnails to the quick when the sun dropped below the treeline.

Ticks from mechanical pencils litter the pages of Tsukishima’s books, still.  



	6. stitch

When Hinata and Lev recruit him for midday laps around the property, Yamaguchi goes without a thought.

They’re quicker than he is and chatter loudly on the trail ahead until their sprints break and Yamaguchi’s able to catch up, legs heavy with pleasant weight—with new strength. The sun shimmers on the asphalt outside the second gym and Kageyama comes too like he can’t stand to miss practice of any sort, despite being leagues ahead of them all already.

To be the only first-year without a place on Karasuno’s court is a palpable disconnect. Their steps slap the pavement the same way but Yamaguchi’s don’t hit as hard. Surrounded by them, he feels like bits of black sky between glittering stars. His friends shine and gleam and radiate and Yamaguchi thinks maybe he can borrow their light until he finds some of his own to hold onto, warm on his palms and leaking between his fingers, making him feel so very alive. He wants to cup his own necessity in his hands. He wants to stagger under its weight.

When he thinks of himself cast aside, he thinks of Tsukishima’s brother.

But he ignores these things when Kageyama nearly trips and Hinata and Lev laugh like it’s the funniest thing in the world, this thing that almost happened one afternoon in summer. Then, even if it’s not on the court, Yamaguchi’s just glad to stand with them at all.

_____

  
Rambunctious bouts of commentary bury the sharp slaps of playing cards on the cafeteria table. Yamaguchi sits across the room, chin in his hand. He counts and recounts the seventeen grains of white rice stuck to the inside of his bowl. The noise drove Tsukishima upstairs some time ago.

Suzumeda sits down across from him, the platter she holds clanking on the tabletop.

“That was louder than I thought it’d be,” she says.

“Suzu,” Yamaguchi says back, “how many first-years does Fukurodani have?”

She plucks a flimsy slice of carrot from the platter between them.

“Just the one.”

“And...he’s a regular?”

“He plays all the time, yeah.”

Yamaguchi deflates, sinking into the bench beneath him.

“It’s got to be weird being the only first-year on the team,” Suzumeda muses thoughtfully. “If you don’t count me, I mean.”

Yamaguchi tilts his head, quizzical. “You’re a first-year?”

“Yeah, aren’t you?” she answers, popping the carrot slice into her mouth.

“But you’re—you’re so tall.”

Suzu chirps a laugh that gets lost in the shouts of the others at the far table. Yamaguchi watches Kuroo and Bokuto exchange powerful high-fives. Mutely, Akaashi inches away from the commotion. Suzu pushes the platter further from them and leans onto her elbows.

“Like that means anything. The tallest guy on Karasuno is a first-year, right? The blond guy?”

Yamaguchi traces circles on the tabletop with his finger. “Yeah, we’re first-years.”

“I see you guys together a lot. You’re close, aren’t you?”

_Close_ —Yamaguchi wants to fold the word in half and slip it into his pocket. Yamaguchi is constantly aware of the space that separates him and Tsukishima at any given moment, in the same way and with the same ease that he gauges the time of day by the light outside: instantly, instinctually, involuntarily. Sometimes, the distance between them hems closed with a brush of their fingers or a nudge of their knees only to tear open again. Needle in one hand and thread in the other, Yamaguchi constantly attempts to stitch it shut.

“Yeah. Yeah, since we were little kids, even.”

“Oh. So you’re like brothers, huh?” Suzu insists merrily.

Yamaguchi squirms where he sits. “Not—um, not really.”

Suzu pushes her ponytail off her shoulder and turns around at another unanimous celebration from the card players, her grin warm. When she turns back to Yamaguchi, she shrugs breezily.

“That’s cool. I don’t really think of any of my friends as sisters. Except Yukie-san, maybe—she’s Fukurodani’s main manager. She’s like, the coolest person I’ve ever met, and a third-year. Like Kiyoko-senpai from your team, Yamaguchi.”

Yamaguchi nods. “And Yachi-san is a first-year like you and me.”

“Yeah, that’s right. You guys are friends too, right?”

“Yachi-san’s the greatest.”

“I can tell,” Suzu replies, grinning brightly. “She talks about you a ton—all of you, I mean.”

Yamaguchi eyes the contrast between the gold polish on Suzumeda’s middle finger and the black polish on her thumbnail. She tucks her fingers under the rubber band on her wrist and twists it idly. Yamaguchi looks up at her when he gets dizzy from watching.

“Really,” she insists, “I hope you guys are even _half_ as proud of yourselves as she is.”

_____

  
“Do you want to go down to the pond with me?”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

Yamaguchi kicks softly at the wall beneath the enormous windows. With the darkness of dusk outside and the fluorescents of the hallway, their reflections are nearly opaque. Yamaguchi shuffles closer to the window.

“Is anyone in the room?” he wonders, his breath fogging the glass.

“Nishinoya-san and Tanaka-san,” Tsukishima sighs.

“Guess that’s why you’re out here, Tsukki.”

He hums and lifts his glasses to dig the heel of his palm into his eye. Yamaguchi huffs another breath and in the fog it creates, writes his initials. He stands back, pleased.

“Do mine,” requests Tsukishima.

“There’s a service charge.”

“Worth every cent.”

Yamaguchi beams and puffs on the glass again. He neatly traces Tsukishima’s initials.

“Satisfactory?” he asks.

“Certainly.”

Hands shoved in the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt, Tsukishima steps to the glass. He fogs it with a breath and swipes his finger through the mist—a single diagonal line. Yamaguchi leans over and swipes another. They both regard the criss-cross, contemplating the scene with tilted heads like a gallery opening.

“Much better,” comments Tsukishima.

Yamaguchi fogs up space next to it and etches both their initials, a plus sign between them.

Tsukishima laughs—a tiny, amused snort—just a breath, really, and it does its part to enforce the characters on the glass. Yamaguchi stares, caught up in the color that blooms below the frames of his glasses. His fingers itch to trace the soft curve of his grin. Tsukishima spins on his heel. He trails into Karasuno’s borrowed room and Yamaguchi stumbles after him, dizzy with love.

_____

  
“Doesn’t that thing hurt your eyes in the dark?”

Kozume straightens to accommodate Hinata's weight as he leans into him.

“It’s not completely dark,” he says.

“Do you wear contacts?” Yamaguchi wonders.

“I probably need them. But it’s too much of a hassle.”

“Kenma-san,” Lev chirps, poking his finger in the air like he pops a thought bubble, “maybe _that’s_ why it took us so long to get in sync, you know, with your set up and my spike. Do I look blurry to you now, Kenma-san? Do I?”

Kozume lowers his phone from his face. “It took us so long to get in sync because you had no idea what you were doing.”

“Don’t worry, Lev,” insists Hinata, “he said the same thing to me.”

“I did not, Shouyou.”

“I know! I was just trying to make him feel better.”

The gym’s white light glares from its open doorway and seeps onto the grass, the night air cool and still. Lev rips handfuls from the earth and sprinkles them on Hinata’s outstretched legs. They debate how much it would take to cover him completely and Yamaguchi pulls at the strings of the sweatshirt he wears; Tsukishima’s sweatshirt, because Yamaguchi didn’t pack one. He slips his fingers under the sleeve cuff. He rubs at the thin, fleecy material with his thumb.

“More than that,” Kozume corrects.

“How much more?”

“A lot.”

“But I’ve already pretty much covered his entire leg,” Lev claims.

“I think you guys overestimate the substantiality of grass…”

“The what?” asks Hinata.

“Nothing,” Kozume decides, looking back to his phone. “Carry on."

Lev gives a dutiful nod. “Yamaguchi, can you get his left leg? I’ll start on his lap.”

“Gotcha.”

Yamaguchi scoots to sit beside Hinata’s knee. He twists his fingers into the grass, crispy from unrelenting summer heat, and tears it up in patches. The mangled blades of green and brown flutter from his hands and carpet Hinata’s pale shin. Like Nishinoya, he doesn’t tan. 

Yamaguchi yelps when Hinata rips up his own handful and stuffs it down the front of his shirt. Yamaguchi shakes out the fabric and guffaws and twists this way and that to rid of the scratchy grass, tumbling traitorously from the hem of Tsukishima’s sweatshirt to cover his lap. Brushing it off his shorts, Yamaguchi promises retribution. Clusters of grass slide off his legs because Hinata shakes with laughter.

_____

  
Fatigue pulls Yamaguchi from the others. A cacophony of croaks drowns the scrape of his sneakers on the walkway pavement as Yamaguchi passes the small pond, bullfrogs rigorous and lively where they hide in the cattails. Moonlight glitters on the still water. His stare slides to a smudge of shadows against the adjacent utility shed and he stills. His eyes adjust. The faint outline of a jersey number surfaces from the inky darkness. The number sways slightly as Yamaguchi watches, inching closer.

Two boys kiss against the side of the shed. They press into each other and come apart just to close the distance again and Yamaguchi instantly withdraws and walks on, heart vaulting into his throat. He eyes the distant boxes of light that mark the windows of the main building and wonders, if it weren't for the amphibious cacophony, if he could hear the soft clicks or wet smacks of their mouths.

Yamaguchi pulls at the hem of his shirt. He wonders what they did before they kissed. He wonders what they will do when they finish. He imagines the smudges moving to the walkway, moving to the doors, moving up the stairs and into their room, moving to their mats and sleeping soundly. Preoccupied, Yamaguchi catches his finger, bending it backward. He swears and soothes the spot with his thumb.

When he slides open the door to Karasuno’s room, a handful of his teammates turn unconsciously from the light of the hallway. They shift in their blankets, slack faces shoved into soft pillows. The room is dark and warm—cozy, even. There's no air conditioner hum to break the sleepy silence. By the far wall, Nishinoya snores.

Yamaguchi kneels between Tsukishima’s mat and his own. He admires the soft, cushiony air of sleep around him before Yamaguchi invades it; he places his hand on Tsukishima’s back, warm through his t-shirt. With his inhale, a notch of his spine presses into Yamaguchi’s palm. If Tsukishima arched like a cat, Yamaguchi could run his finger over every sequential bump buried beneath pale skin. He pulls his arm to his side when Tsukishima stirs. Tsukishima reaches blindly until he finds Yamaguchi—he wraps his fingers around his forearm, gently, considerately like he thinks it may shatter in his soft grip. His palm is warm from the way his fingers curl into it when he sleeps.

“Yamaguchi. I hope this is you.”

Yamaguchi breathes a muted laugh. 

“Yeah,” confirms Tsukishima, “that’s you.”

“And if it wasn’t?” Yamaguchi whispers back.

“Would be mildly embarrassed,” Tsukishima mumbles.

Sneaky moonlight glares from Tsukishima’s glasses, folded neatly next to his pillow. He sees only his outline through the dark and still, Yamaguchi’s heart pushes for his mouth. Tsukishima’s fingers slide down his arm to loop loosely around his wrist.

“Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, Tsukki.”

“Okay.”

So tenderly, Tsukishima smooths the pad of his thumb over Yamaguchi’s skin. The soft stroke puts a hitch in Yamaguchi’s breath. He knows Tsukishima hears it. He pulls his bottom lip between his teeth and only lets it go when Tsukishima takes his hand away.

“Go to bed, maybe,” Tsukishima tells him.

Yamaguchi does. He dreams that Tsukishima develops dozens of unsavory burns from the kisses he leaves all over his pale body, long and taut and steeped in harsh orange sunlight, puckered kiss marks dotting him plentifully like chicken pox or freckles. He feels the white slide of sunscreen on his lips as they tremble. Yamaguchi wakes up hard with a waxy, chemical taste in his mouth.

He wakes up happy.


	7. the moon and the tide

“Yamaguchi, there’s grass all over your mat.”

“Sorry, I’ll clean it up.”

“No,” Daichi replies, amused, “I just meant…why?”

Yamaguchi shakes out his blanket, eyeing the mess.

“Hinata,” he answers.

“Oh. Gotcha,” Daichi affirms.

His strong jawline appears harsh compared to his eyes, soft from sleep. He claps a hand on Yamaguchi’s shoulder in passing. Sugawara idles in the doorway but spins on his heel when Daichi joins him, shoes squeaking on the tiled floor. As they go, their voices bounce off the colossal hallway windows.

Next to Yamaguchi, Tsukishima folds his own blanket.

“Remember that cryptozoology special we saw on swamp monsters?” he implores.

“You think I could forget that?”

“They leave grass clippings wherever they go.”

Yamaguchi coughs an unexpected laugh. “They so do not.”

“Is there something you need to tell me, Yamaguchi?”

Every shelf on every floor of Shinzen’s high school couldn’t hold all the things Yamaguchi needs to tell Tsukishima. Pale morning sun floods into the room and festoons Tsukishima with a crown of light, a halo of sorts, so tangible that Yamaguchi wants to lift it from his blond hair and place it atop his own flyaway locks of chestnut. His stare prompts from Tsukishima an inquisitive hum.

“Yeah,” Yamaguchi answers finally, “and it’s that I’m never watching cryptid stuff again.”

Straight-faced, Tsukishima stares back at him.

“But one airs the day we get back,” he says. “It’s about Yetis.”

With the side of his hand, Yamaguchi sweeps the grassy shambles into a mound at the center of his mat. He picks the stray blades from his sweatshirt and sprinkles them into the heap, too.

“Is that my sweatshirt?”

Color sizzles beneath his freckles. “I didn’t bring one.”

“Oh.”

“Here, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi says, untangling it from himself.

“No. You can keep it on. You never borrow my clothes anymore.”

He tugs idly at the sweatshirt’s drawstrings. “You hate when your brother does it.”

“Yeah,” Tsukishima drawls, pushing up his glasses, “but that’s Akiteru.”

_____

  
Finally, the sun’s sheer brilliance hides behind dense clouds. A diluted purple hangs overhead. Yamaguchi imagines himself reaching up and sliding a finger through the dull watercolor, poking a hole in the thin sheet of sky to allow a strike of lightning.

The onslaught of a storm feels tacky on his skin. It weighs him down although he’s faster than Lev today, stalling at the corner of the gym for him to catch up. Hinata buzzes around him, an endless fountain of electric energy—Karasuno’s own lightning strike. Yamaguchi frets he’ll get zapped when Hinata comes to hang off his shoulder.

“Yamaguchi,” he chirps, “do you think it’ll rain?”

“I hope so, Hinata.”

“Why? You sick of the sun?”

“No way. It just feels like it needs to, is all.”

Hinata and Lev follow his stare upward to the bloated clouds.

“Maybe it’ll be acid rain,” Lev suggests. “Kuroo-san said something about that this morning.”

Hinata stiffens. “Maybe he was trying to scare you.”

“Probably. I’m pretty easy to scare.”

“Me too,” says Yamaguchi.

“Pinch servers have to be brave, Yamaguchi!”

“Yeah, not this one.”

“Do you think it’s gonna rain?” Hinata asks again.

“No,” Lev tells him. “It’s probably just faking.”

The sky splits as if solely to defy him.

It drizzles and then a blanket of rain spills onto the earth, fat drops cool on their flushed, sticky skin. Lev breaks into a sprint and Yamaguchi and Hinata go after him. Yamaguchi frets he’ll slip with every step but doesn’t stop running, charged by the heavy rain and its thunderous nature, the chaos and the bizarre clarity chained to it. He eyes the soaked droop of Hinata’s t-shirt where he sprints just steps ahead.

A handful of players crowd toward the gym from their scattered positions on the field, Yamaguchi sees them in the distance: bustling figures blurred by the static effect of the rain. They usher in the managers first, clipboards raised over their heads and then vanish through the doorway themselves. Yamaguchi’s shoes sink into the waterlogged earth as he follows.

But Lev veers left, away from the gym and when Hinata follows, Yamaguchi does too. Hinata pumps his fists into the air though Yamaguchi can’t hear a thing save the wild drumming on all sides—nature sounds, and Yamaguchi catalogues them all with the slickness of his skin and the alien chill the summer rain leaves in his spine through his sopping t-shirt. Relentlessly, the clouds unburden themselves. Overhead, the sky brightens.

Lev turns over his shoulder for a single, preoccupied moment and his foot catches on gummy earth. Yamaguchi doubles over. He pants down at the mud caked from Lev’s ankle to his hip like a growth, bubbling under the pouring rain. Dense drops splatter over him as Lev throws his head back in laughter and then Hinata is at Yamaguchi’s side, laughing too, hair plastered to his scalp, void of its usual vivacity.

They each take an arm and pull him up. The three of them sink into the new mud, so thick it covers the bands on Yamaguchi’s sneakers. They stumble drunkenly in the doughy earth, the environmental chaos more inviting in the moment than honey-colored hardwood. They tilt their faces upward to catch fresh raindrops. When Yamaguchi grins, they drip through his teeth. He throws his arms out to his sides—free. He floats despite the way his drenched clothes hang off his frame.

Only when the downpour diminishes does he face the gym.

Hinata and Lev follow suit. They banter animatedly at his back but Yamaguchi stares at Tsukishima where he stands in the open doorway, hand fixed on his hip. Yamaguchi halts just outside the gym. He holds out his arms. Mischievously, he grins.

“Do not hug me,” Tsukishima orders.

“You mean that, Tsukki?”

“Right now I do.”

Inside the gym, Suzumeda hands out fluffy towels to Hinata and Lev.

Yamaguchi drops his arms to his sides. “That’s no fun.”

“It’s fun for me,” Tsukishima insists. “And dry.”

“I think it’s your loss, Tsukki.”

“I’m not arguing that.”

“Towel en route!” calls Suzumeda just before it smacks into Yamaguchi’s chest.

_____

  
A steady stream splashes over the porcelain of the sink basin. It ceases only in the moments Lev dips his towel under the faucet. Mud and dirt dye the formerly pristine fibers a dingy brown as he scrubs it over his knee, down his shin, up his thigh. His haphazard motions only spread the grit.

“Poor towel,” says Yamaguchi.

“It’s made a noble sacrifice.”

He grins and pulls his damp shirt from where it sticks uncomfortably to his stomach.

“This is what I get,” muses Lev, “for laughing at Kageyama-san that time he almost tripped. He seemed pretty peeved he didn’t run with us today, didn’t he? I feel bad. I don’t think he likes to be left out of stuff like that.”

Yamaguchi taps his fingers on the edge of the sink. He pokes the pillar of water with his finger and alters the sound of its impact on the porcelain.

“I just don’t think he likes to be left out of whatever Hinata does.”

Lev chirps a good-natured laugh. “Yeah. They’re like birds of a feather. Or crows, I guess.”

The door swings open. Nekoma’s captain halts with his hand on the knob when he sees them.

“What did you do?”

“I slipped in the mud, Kuroo-san.”

“Yeah. Sounds about right,” Kuroo replies, entering entirely. He occupies the sink next to Yamaguchi and runs the tap. “Hey, you’re Karasuno’s pinch server. Right?”

Yamaguchi nods. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“Cool. Can’t wait to see you on the court.”

“Oh, uh, thanks. Me either,” sighs Yamaguchi.

Kuroo’s grin is soft despite his other features, sharp like ice but seemingly warm to the touch.

“Kuroo-san, tell Yamaguchi what you told me about acid rain!”

He turns to Yamaguchi. “It happens with the presence of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides in the air. Pretty cool.”

“But we could _die_ ,” frets Lev.

“Nitwit, it’s harmless to humans,” Kuroo mentions offhandedly. “Have you seen Tsukki?”

Yamaguchi stiffens with the sudden pit that claws its way into his chest. His eyes search the air between them like if he spies it, he could reach out and pluck the name between his fingers, pocketing it forever more.

“I think he went upstairs,” he answers.

Kuroo kills the faucet and hums lowly. He pads to the door.

“I won't bug him, then. Lev, drag any of that mud into our room and you’ll be walking back to Tokyo. Now rest up, young ones.”

_____

  
The air in the bathroom adjacent to Karasuno’s room is heavy, warm and nearly palpable with condensation. Yamaguchi feels he could dig his hands into it and pull it closer. He wants to do the same with Tsukishima’s hair, fluffy and feathery from how he’s towel-dried it. It refuses to deflate.

Tsukishima stands in front of the sink, clean, shirtless, pale but flushed; fresh from his bath. His long, lean torso presses into the sink as he leans close to the mirror. He wipes the fog from it with his palm and stands back. Yamaguchi runs his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip, stuck. When Tsukishima turns to him, his body does too. Yamaguchi considers how unmerited it would have been for anyone other than himself to devour the scene, how much of Tsukishima would go unappreciated, unloved, unthought of in colors like soft pink and eager red and cool, familiar blue.

“Kuroo-san was asking about you.”

His voice comes out rough, raspy. Tsukishima turns away.

“I’m done practicing,” he says.

Yamaguchi peels himself from the tile underfoot. He goes to him, a tide pulled by the moon.

Tsukishima’s glasses lie folded on the shelf below the mirror—no partition between their gazes as Yamaguchi closes the space, trudging through the warm, tangible air that hangs between them. His footfalls resound. Tsukishima watches him, eyes wide, owlish, engorged with soft bewilderment and cast in a sheen of gold. Yamaguchi eyes the shadowed dip in his throat. He exhales.

So slowly, Yamaguchi presses into him. His arms wind wholly around Tsukishima and he hooks his chin over his bare shoulder. His warmth melts through Yamaguchi’s shirt, adhering them. Yamaguchi takes in a breath but loses it completely when their chests push tightly together as a result, fingers clenching on the skin stretched over Tsukishima’s sides. Tangled up in him, Tsukishima stills.

“Are you okay?” he murmurs.

Yamaguchi nods against him. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“No, that’s—” Tsukishima clears his throat. “It’s fine.”

Yamaguchi shivers at Tsukishima’s hesitant hand on the small of his back. He pushes him closer. Yamaguchi reels—Tsukishima’s hipbones prod his lower belly and, feeling him shake, Tsukishima rests a steady hand on his shoulder. Yamaguchi steps a foot between Tsukishima's. He shifts against him and hides his face in the crook of his neck. Flush against him like this, Yamaguchi flares. Hues of red drown the bronze of his skin. Tan lines vanish beneath the eclipsing color.

Tsukishima’s hand slides from his shoulder and tugs at the collar of Yamaguchi’s shirt, still damp. He pulls the fabric down just enough to trace the slant of Yamaguchi’s collarbone with his forefinger, sighing a breath in Yamaguchi’s ear. Yamaguchi presses a firm hand between Tsukishima’s shoulder-blades until the buried rhythm drums through them both; two hearts pushed together behind layers of stubborn skin and muscle. He nudges his nose into the warm skin of his neck and stays there. As he archives their myriad of touches, he breathes Tsukishima in.

He’s fresh from a bath, but he still smells like sunscreen.


	8. new freckles

The Fukurodani and Nekoma captains have history, Yamaguchi figures. They are simply unable to ignore one another. Their banter volleys over the net with the ball. Their competitiveness saturates the air around the court, sizzling with a rivalry so charged that every spark taunts a boom. Yamaguchi’s foot taps restlessly on the hardwood.

“Yamaguchi, you alright?” Ennoshita wonders. “You’re kind of fidgety.”

“He’s always fidgety,” supplies Hinata.

A whistle shrieks. Yamaguchi turns from the court to stare between the two of them.

“He’s right. And I’m fine, honest.”

“Whoa,” Hinata gapes, “did you see that?”

Akaashi is the sole music note on the sheet, encased in Bokuto’s spirited scribbles. Yamaguchi yearns to possess that sort of composure, that sort of glowy grace—the sort that persists both on and off the court, humming, soft and serene like morning sun through sheer curtains. The warmth of him shines through the gym. He wants to warn Tsukishima in case he burns under its brilliance.

“It’s totally impressive,” Ennoshita mumbles. “A second-year and already vice captain.”

“Yeah,” breathes Yamaguchi.

Ennoshita hums and leans back on his hands. His shoulders hunch forward, curving him toward to the court like it beckons him. He leans the very same way on the sidelines, shoulder to shoulder with Yamaguchi, boxed in by infuriating white lines. 

“You know, Yamaguchi.”

Yamaguchi turns. “What?”

“I don’t think it will be too long before we’re out there, too. Consistently.”

Ennoshita grins, wide and certain. Fingers curling into his palms, Yamaguchi grins back.

“Could I try and receive some of your serves later?”

“Totally,” chirps Yamaguchi. “Let’s do it.”

“You guys are practicing tonight?” Hinata interjects. “I want in!”

Ennoshita’s grin falls to a smirk. “If you can handle it.”

“I think I can—no, I mean—I definitely can, Ennoshita-san.”

Kozume’s setter dump wins Nekoma the set. At Yamaguchi’s side, Hinata cheers for him.

“It may not look like it yet,” Ennoshita says, staring straight ahead, “but I’m gonna be my best here.”

Charged by the rivalry, the cheers, the movement and the summer heat trapped inside the gym, Yamaguchi vibrates a rut into the floor.

“Me too," he promises, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.

_____

  
“You’re spending a lot of time with Hinata.”

Yamaguchi pulls on a fresh t-shirt. He balls up the discarded one and drops it into his bag. Jovial commotion from the hallway seeps into the room through the gap in the door, left ajar. Tanaka’s boisterous laugh cuts off with a concerning howl. Yamaguchi steps to the door and pushes it shut.

“Yeah, well, with you spending all your time in the third gym,” he trails off.

“It’s not like you can’t come too,” Tsukishima tells him.

He lifts the wadded shirt from Yamaguchi’s bag, folds it, and puts it back.

“I’m not good enough yet, I don’t think.”

“And I am?”

“Duh,” blurts Yamaguchi. “Yes, Tsukki. Daichi-san wants you for three-on-threes all the time.”

“Only because of my height,” Tsukishima drones, kneeling to untie his shoe.

Yamaguchi bristles. “That is not true.”

He speaks through gritted teeth. Tsukishima doesn’t argue. If height were the sole determiner, Yamaguchi wouldn’t expend every morsel of energy he possesses: he wouldn’t dive for Ennoshita’s receives until his knees turned blue beneath his pads, wouldn’t strain his every muscle to meet Lev’s stretches, wouldn’t sprint until his blood sizzled to run at the same pace as Hinata. He wouldn’t _have_ to. If height was all that mattered, Yamaguchi would stand on the court.

But he doesn’t.

He looms over Tsukishima. “You don’t really think that, do you?”

“It’s the same reason Haiba Lev plays.”

When Tsukishima looks up, the lights overhead glare from his lenses. 

“You’re on my shoelace,” he says.

“Lev plays because he practices hard.”

“Okay.”

“I know because he practices with _me,_ ” Yamaguchi tells him.

Tsukishima stands. The few inches he has on him have Yamaguchi forcing himself taller.

“Okay,” he says again. “I didn’t mean—”

“You think I don’t practice hard?” Yamaguchi accuses.

He tries so hard to keep the hurt from his voice that it slips from his mouth completely emotionless; flat like paper. With the way Tsukishima regards him, Yamaguchi pictures him folding it in two with delicate hands, pink and pale. His svelte fingers slide artfully along the crease. Yamaguchi’s mouth goes dry.

Tsukishima murmurs his name as Yamaguchi shuts the door behind him.

_____

  
Yamaguchi counts nine small puddles in the uneven pavement of the walkway before he passes the first gym. The fire in his chest peters out in the cool, late afternoon air. The pinks and oranges of the sunset melt over him as he walks, steps heavy like the dripping atmosphere from long-departed rain. The humidity leeches onto his tanned, tacky skin. It snuffs out his useless frustration. Plastic bottles clank and rattle in the second gym. Passing the third, his gaze falls to his feet.

He finds Suzumeda on the bank of the tiny pond. She gives him a grand wave and lifts her arms to slip her long hair into a ponytail. Clotted mud squelches under his sneakers as Yamaguchi crosses the field. He joins her on the bank, sucking a breath through his teeth as the gooey ground beneath him soaks into his shorts.

“Oops,” she says, “I should’ve warned you. My ass is soaked.”

“Once you get past the initial soak, it’s not so bad. What are you doing?”

“Hiding,” answers Suzumeda, pulling a knee to her chest.

Yamaguchi looks around. “In plain sight?”

“I hear it’s the best strategy.”

He takes up a stick by the edge of the water and taps it idly against his knee. It leaves behind muddy, diluted drops and a sole blade of grass. He flicks off the grass with the end of the stick.

“Who’re you hiding from?” he wonders.

Suzumeda rests her chin on her knee. “One of the guys from Ubugawa.”

“Is—is he bothering you?”

“Nah,” she insists, flapping her hand at him, “he just wants me to talk to Yukie-san for him. He keeps bugging me about it. But I don’t wanna.” Suzumeda plucks up a piece of grass, places it on her knee and puffs it off with a sharp breath. She says, “He’s a loser, and on the way other end of the spectrum is Yukie-san—the coolest girl in the history of ever.”

Yamaguchi turns away and implores, “Cool people can’t be with losers?”

“Not unless that loser is me.”

He turns back. He laughs when she does; short, sputtering giggles, light and contagious in their modesty. She drops her knee so her long legs stretch out in front of her. The heel of her sneaker nearly meets the brink of the pond. Yamaguchi mirrors her and ripples break over the water; he just skims its mirrored surface.

“What’s with your mope, Yamaguchi?” she asks. “Is it a girl problem? I’m steeped in those.”

He gives her a lopsided grin. “Not exactly.”

Footsteps echo from the pavement across the field as four players run the walkway. He and Suzumeda turn their heads to watch them progress quickly out of view, vanishing around the side of the gym. Yamaguchi’s stare falls to his lap.

“I just—all the guys here are so good. I’m—I’m flailing to catch up.”

“Oh. Volleyball problems.”

Yamaguchi nods. He digs the point of the stick into the gluey mud at the water’s edge.

“Well,” Suzumeda drawls, “I think it’s better to flail in third place than stay stagnant in second.”

“Stagnant,” parrots Yamaguchi, thinking of Tsukishima’s placid, static breathing while his own heaves from his lungs only to be sucked in again—in, out, in, out, in. “Suzu, did you ever play volleyball?”

“I used to play soccer.”

“I bet you were good,” Yamaguchi tells her.

“I was,” she replies. “But I could’ve been better, I think.”

She twists the collection of rubber bands around her wrist. In the setting sun, her freckles twinkle. Yamaguchi doubts his own do the same. He absently runs the pad of his finger across his collarbone the way Tsukishima had.

“My coach used to say ‘if it doesn’t move you forward, leave it behind,’” she reports, and Yamaguchi’s heart drops through his ribcage. “I think that’s kind of shitty, though. I mean, shouldn't we be able to keep the things we want to? Just because we like them?”

“Or maybe try to pull them along with us,” Yamaguchi contributes.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” he mumbles, eyes hooking onto a shock of blond hair.

Suzumeda knocks their shoulders together. “Don’t stop flailing, okay?”

“I won’t,” Yamaguchi assures her. “I really won’t.”

_____

  
Yamaguchi catches Tsukishima as he heads from the third gym, kneepads in his hand.

“Hey.”

“Tsukki,” replies Yamaguchi, falling into step beside him.

“Who was that?” Tsukishima asks.

“One of Fukurodani’s managers. She’s a first-year too.”

“Do you like her?”

Yamaguchi hums. “We’re fast friends.”

“No, I meant—I meant,” Tsukishima sighs, exasperated, “more than that.”

Yamaguchi stops cold.

“What the fuck,” he breathes.

Tsukishima turns to face him once he realizes he’s not at his side. They stare at each other under orange light. Cool shadows peak across their faces. Yamaguchi tugs at the string stretched tightly between them and wonders how Tsukishima doesn’t feel it—how it doesn’t yank him forward in the moment and send him stumbling on the pavement, knocking into Yamaguchi’s chest, ripping his breath from him all over again.

“If I liked her,” Yamaguchi says evenly, “I’d be back there with her.”

A moment swells between them. Crickets hum.

“You have new freckles.”

“What?”

Tsukishima steps in front of him, eyes flickering like sunlight off flipped coins.

“You have new freckles,” he says again. “There.”

Gingerly, Tsukishima pokes the bridge of Yamaguchi’s nose. Yamaguchi’s skin buzzes under the attentive touch. This close, he hears Tsukishima’s soft breaths from his mouth, slightly parted. Tsukishima smooths his finger over the spatter of freckles under Yamaguchi’s eye, watching carefully like he expects them to stick to his skin and gather under his fingertip like specks of glitter.

“And there.”

Yamaguchi wonders if the warmth of his flush translates beneath such a delicate touch.

_____

  
Yamaguchi’s nerves spike the gym ceiling. They pierce plaster and metal and glass, fallen shards sparkling like gems in the sunlight that drops through fresh industrial gashes. The debris coats the court—both his teammates and Nekoma as Yamaguchi quakes on the sidelines.

Sugawara jostles his shoulder in his light grip.

“Yamaguchi?” he coos. “Ukai-san’s calling you.”

Yamaguchi nods. He regards the complimentary beauty mark on by the corner of Sugawara’s eye and wonders why he wasn’t given one mark just the same but dozens, splattered darkly like obstructions across the plain map of his face. He only realizes he’s folded his arm to touch them when Sugawara presses his fingertips to the back of his hand.

“Hey, is anybody home?”

“Yes,” blurts Yamaguchi, arm dropping to his side. “Sorry, yeah. I’m ready.”

_____

  
Sparks zing from Yamaguchi the remainder of the night; the only hints of light in the quiet room. They singe the practice shirt he refuses to remove because he won’t let this moment of pride pass just yet, not with the slaps and bounces of both his successful points fresh in his ears.

Tanaka’s congratulatory cuff left an ache in his shoulder and Yamaguchi winces, rubbing his palm over the sore spot. He turns on his mat to face Tsukishima. Asahi and Nishinoya mutter to one another at the far wall. In the corner of the room, Ennoshita texts. A dim light glows on the ceiling from his phone screen. Moonlight glares over the plethora of empty mats on the floor, pillows and blankets thrown haphazardly upon each of them. 

Yamaguchi tries to summon a yawn, but he can’t manage it.

“What?” mumbles Tsukishima, watching him.

“Tsukki, I’m not tired.”

“Count sheep.”

“I don’t like sheep,” Yamaguchi whispers.

“Count dogs.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Tsukishima whispers back, rolling over. “Let me know if it doesn’t work.”

Yamaguchi counts. He rolls his fingers into his palms and sparks simmer in his chest again, fending off sleep. Across the room, Asahi gently shushes Nishinoya’s sudden hiss of laughter. Yamaguchi watches the faint glow at the corner of the ceiling. The air conditioner whirs in the busy silence.

“Not working,” Yamaguchi admits.

Tsukishima stirs, shuffling to face him. He stares at Yamaguchi for a long moment.

“At all?” he asks.

Yamaguchi shakes his head.

Tsukishima reaches for his glasses. “Do you want to go down to the pond?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3


	9. apex

They slip from Karasuno’s borrowed room like shadows.

“What’s the moon like tonight?”

“Should be in its first quarter,” Tsukishima answers.

A string of moonlight slips over the staircase. They walk it like a tightrope.

“I bet your telescope has missed you all week, Tsukki.”

“And you, too.”

Yamaguchi breathes Tsukishima in as he passes, soap and sunscreen, and thinks of the press of Tsukishima’s fingers atop his, twisting and swiveling so gradually because Yamaguchi can never get the lens to focus right.

“Just one more day.”

The downstairs hallway buzzes. Lev pushes off the doorframe of the cafeteria when he sees them. Crouched on the adjacent wall, Kozume turns to the sudden commotion. He and Tsukishima share a detached nod.

“Hey, what’re you guys doing?”

“We were going to check out the pond,” Yamaguchi tells him.

“Oh, sounds fun. Can I come?”

Lev stares down at them, grinning, but Yamaguchi has had too many broken moments with Tsukishima to watch shards of another fall into their mosaic. A monsoon of cheers twirls from the cafeteria. Drawn to the chaos, Lev turns over his shoulder. Kozume casts a sharp, furtive glance between Tsukishima and Yamaguchi.

“You can’t go,” he decides. “Kuro said we have a meeting tonight.”

“Huh? Kuroo-san said so? I don’t remember that.”

Kozume turns back to his phone. “Because you don’t listen.”

“Oh,” Lev chirps. “Then I’ll catch you guys tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Yamaguchi chirps back, “okay.”

The hollow rattle of empty bottles from the second gym will stay with him, pinned on the back wall of his mind like scrawled notes on a cork board. He and Tsukishima slink across the back field and Yamaguchi watches for the beams of their flashlights to illuminate the ground underfoot, every breeze that whistles through summer grass the flipping of a parchment page. He’s ten again and holding onto the back of Tsukishima’s shirt as they navigate the darkness.

Tsukishima tugs at the hem of his shorts. “I miss wearing jeans.”

“Jeans miss wearing you,” says Yamaguchi.

They sit on the far bank of the pond. The desolate third gym looms in the distance. Tsukishima turns pointedly away. Yamaguchi follows his gaze to the disc of white light on the pond’s surface. It sways with the ripples coaxed over the water from gentle wind.

“Feels good,” Yamaguchi says of the breeze.

“Better than the sun.”

“What hurts most?”

“The back of my neck. And my knees.”

“Want me to fight the sun for you?” he asks.

Tsukishima grins at his hands that wring in his lap.

“The sun is fifteen million degrees,” he mentions. “I don’t think your SPF forty-five covers that.”

“Tsukki, we won’t know until we try.”

“I’m certain we do.”

Yamaguchi huffs a lazy laugh. Tsukishima places a hand between them, fingers twisting into the green grass. Yamaguchi watches his gaze, slow but busy as it slides from his lap to the pond in front of them, allowing moonlight to jump from the lenses of his glasses, hiding the soft gold beneath them.

“How do you feel,” Tsukishima mutters, “when you’re alone with me?”

Gravity increases. It pins Yamaguchi to the grass. It takes more effort to breathe, now.

“Right,” Yamaguchi answers, heaving. “Whole.”

Tsukishima nods. “Yeah," he replies vaguely. "Yes.”

The moment feels achingly complete; Yamaguchi waits for it to topple with the arrival of Hinata, with the arrival of Lev, with a sudden downpour of returning rain, with the cracking of the very earth beneath them—Tsukishima on one side of the gaping divide, Yamaguchi on the other. But the clouds withhold the rain and the earth stays stubbornly solid beneath them and Yamaguchi aches all the same, hands scrabbling at the string between their chests.

Across the field, the third gym looms too loudly to ignore.

“Do you feel bad for me?” wonders Yamaguchi.

Tsukishima tears his eyes from the water. Quizzically, he stares.

“For not playing,” Yamaguchi clarifies. “Do you feel bad for me like you did for Akiteru?”

“I didn’t feel bad for him.”

Tsukishima’s fingers clench in the grass. They loosen as Yamaguchi runs his fingertip over the back of his hand like he had through the fog on the window, their initials so clear in his mind, gleaming like the pale light from the surface of the murky water. He traces them on Tsukishima’s soft skin without thinking.

“You played today,” Tsukishima tells him, watching the path of Yamaguchi’s finger.

“For a fraction of a minute…”

“You scored two points. We wouldn’t have won without those two points.”

“Just two,” mumbles Yamaguchi.

“If we had lost, we would’ve had to run. And I would have burned. You saved me a burn,” Tsukishima lilts, playful. Yamaguchi gives a weak, watery grin and Tsukishima tilts his hand to catch Yamaguchi’s fingertip between his middle and ring finger. “You work harder,” he insists, staring hard at him, “than anyone here. Namely me. So, no. I don’t feel bad for you. I’m—I’m _proud_ of you.”

“Proud?” Yamaguchi repeats.

“Immensely.”

“Tsukki,” he breathes, winded.

He finds his hand on Tsukishima’s leg, fingers curling over the inside of his thigh as if he’s done it one thousand times before. A breeze combs through the grass. Yamaguchi feels Tsukishima’s goosebumps under the pads of his fingers. Warmth transfers through their skin—from Tsukishima’s thigh to Yamaguchi’s palm and back again, stirring, rushing, restless. Tsukishima shifts. The tip of Yamaguchi’s ring finger incidentally slips beneath the hem of his shorts and Yamaguchi exhales hard, letting his hand slip entirely off Tsukishima’s thigh. It falls to the ground between them. 

“We should go inside.”

The bullfrogs rumble in the cattails.

“Yeah,” utters Tsukishima, voice swept up in nature sounds.

Yamaguchi pulls him up. He watches Tsukishima brush the dirt from himself.

But Yamaguchi’s head buzzes, screeching and shrieking like an alarm, protesting more intensely with each step that brings them closer to the gym. He stops. Like he pulls on the string in his chest, Tsukishima stops too. The wind whips at Tsukishima’s t-shirt, a flash of pale skin stretched over his hipbone glaring through the dark like the disc of moonlight from the pond’s surface.

Yamaguchi thinks of the things he wants. He sees himself gathering them into his arms, batting them closer with outstretched fingers so he can grab them and keep them safe, cradle them, collect them, dig his hands into them until they come apart so he can do the same with all their tiny, fragmented pieces.

“I don’t want to go inside,” he calls over the rising wind.

Tsukishima turns, bathed in moonlight.

He calls back, “Me either.”

The steps Yamaguchi takes toward the gym serve only to bring him to Tsukishima, wrapping his fingers around his wrist and pulling him around the pond and behind the utility shed at the edge of the property, rusted and forgotten.

The back of the structure faces an overgrown fence. Vines wrap and twist around the chain links the same way Yamaguchi and Tsukishima twist into one another, pressed tight. Tsukishima’s hands flit up and down and over and around—butterfly touches on Yamaguchi’s skin, bunching Yamaguchi’s clothes, sweeping over Yamaguchi’s freckles like he maps their clusters. His chest bumps warmly beneath Yamaguchi’s palms. He keeps them there while Tsukishima’s hands stay busy; they slide up Yamaguchi’s sides, press into the soft dip below Yamaguchi’s ribcage, flit to cup Yamaguchi’s jaw where they finally linger.

“Ah,” Yamaguchi whimpers, overwrought.

“Yamaguchi…”

He brings Tsukishima’s forehead to press against his with a hand in his hair, soft kinks of blond strewn through his trembling fingers. Tsukishima tilts his head and sighs. His breath skims over Yamaguchi’s cheek. Yamaguchi sighs too, his breath hot in Tsukishima’s ear. Eyes shut tight, Tsukishima’s thumbs pet the sides of Yamaguchi’s mouth.

“Tsukki,” Yamaguchi demands, hand tightening in his hair, “I can’t just guess what you want. I can’t keep guessing what you want, you have to _tell_ me, Tsukki.” Desperate for the gold of his eyes, Yamaguchi waits for Tsukishima to open them. He begs, “Look at me.”

Tsukishima shakes his head, their foreheads sliding together. His hands slip from Yamaguchi’s jaw to rest on his shoulders. His fingers clench the fabric of his shirt like he holds onto something threatening to slip away.

“Look at me,” Yamaguchi pleads once more.

“I’ll kiss you if I look at you,” Tsukishima confesses.

“So kiss me.”

“Here?”

His incredulity is met with silence. Yamaguchi tips Tsukishima’s head back just enough to slide his glasses from his face. He slips them into his pocket—just one of Tsukishima’s many partitions, deducted. When he looks back up, Tsukishima gazes at him.

Liquid gold spins around dark pupils, blown wide.

Yamaguchi swallows his gasp, thinking that if Tsukishima doesn’t kiss him now, he’ll feel the sting of it for the remainder of summer, not unlike the pink sunburns that glare angrily from Tsukishima’s skin. Tsukishima’s fingers trace the collar of Yamaguchi’s shirt. They press the fabric against his flushed skin.

“You have tan lines here too, did you know that?” he says. “From your shirt.”

He ducks down and kisses him.

Tsukishima’s hand immediately slides to the back of Yamaguchi’s neck to urge him forward and presses flush against him at the same time, Yamaguchi’s shoulder-blades digging into the shed wall. Yamaguchi cups Tsukishima’s face. He holds him close as their mouths catch one another’s time and again, so soft yet demanding; eager. Heat sweeps Yamaguchi up and down, more intense than each sweltering afternoon of the past week. It settles high in his cheeks and low in his belly. It jerks his hips forward so they bump Tsukishima’s, small, arhythmic nudges he can’t rein in.

Yamaguchi pushes sharp, stuttering breaths through his nose. He needs to breathe but he needs to kiss Tsukishima even more. He pushes him closer with a hand on the back of his neck and Tsukishima gasps against his lips, wincing. Yamaguchi relents. Only now does he feel the heat of Tsukishima’s burn on his palm.

“Easy,” warns Tsukishima.

Yamaguchi nods and nods and nods against him before he catches his mouth again, their lips slick and red and this time, Yamaguchi kisses him _deep_ , licking into Tsukishima’s hot mouth, searching for more of his warmth. His tongue pulls from Tsukishima short, compulsory grunts. His hands slide into Yamaguchi’s hair and tremble. Yamaguchi kisses him through his static grin, open-mouthed and slow. Tsukishima’s fingertips scrabble against his scalp.

“Oh,” he murmurs, slipping the word between Yamaguchi’s lips.

Yamaguchi wonders if his love has a taste; if there’s something Tsukishima gets from his kiss he won’t ever find elsewhere, sweet and palpable on his tongue, heavy on his taste buds from years left unappreciated.

“Tsukki,” he pleads. “Tsukki.”

Tsukishima pulls back, face positively lax but eyes on fire, sparking and glimmering as they bore into Yamaguchi’s. Tsukishima slides his fingers over his red cheek. Gentle with patience, he curls his fingers over the shell of Yamaguchi’s ear. Yamaguchi pants up at him. His features pull wide like he looks at the stars.

“I want to do this every time I see you,” he whispers, head tipping forward.

“I know,” Tsukishima breathes in return.

He pulls Yamaguchi’s hand into his. Seamlessly, their fingers interlock. Yamaguchi’s eyes squeeze shut. The press of their palms intoxicates him, the warm, steadfast tangle of their fingers just as gratifying as the wet slide of their mouths. 

“When we aren’t in the same room and you wonder if I’m thinking about you,” Tsukishima mutters against his forehead, “Yamaguchi, I am.”

The pale moon highlights the peaks of his face when Tsukishima pulls back. Yamaguchi’s heart pushes to the very front of his chest like it tries to get to him. The beat of it drowns the rush of the wind, the croaks of distant bullfrogs, the insectan hum—everything but Tsukishima’s soft breaths, just beginning to wane, puffing gently between their open mouths.

Yamaguchi swallows Tsukishima’s soft, subsequent sigh. The warmth in his mouth is all-encompassing, so gratefully wet as it welcomes the slow slide of Yamaguchi’s tongue. His attention is pulled south; Tsukishima’s hips start to bump his. Yamaguchi’s hand falls to caress his hipbone, the material of his shirt brushing his knuckles, sweet skin warm and tight under his fingers. His other hand presses into the small of Tsukishima’s back. Their push-and-pull obliterates any slight space between them and Yamaguchi whines through their kiss, needy.

It breaks with a snap. Shoulder-blades sore, Yamaguchi takes their momentum and twists so Tsukishima’s back hits the shed. The hollow sound thumps through the still, hot air that surrounds them. He slips his leg between Tsukishima’s to keep him there.

“Ah, you’re—so big,” he whimpers, cutting off with a jagged sigh.

Tsukishima is hard against his thigh.

Yamaguchi lassoes his mind and yanks it back as it tries to float off. Tsukishima’s arms wrap tightly around his neck and pull him closer, too close to kiss, so Yamaguchi huffs into the pale skin of his neck. Yamaguchi bangs his palm into the dirty wall at Tsukishima’s back to brace himself. Tsukishima draws out a long, hot breath into his ear.

“Yamaguchi, I need to move,” he breathes, voice strained to an octave Yamaguchi’s never heard from him. “Can I?”

“Yeah, please, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi tells his collarbone.

He scrapes rust under his fingernails as Tsukishima rocks against him. Swept up in their breathing, Yamaguchi burns red. The scent of sunscreen pervades the air they share, so familiar that Yamaguchi can't help but push against Tsukishima _hard_ , wanting more. Tsukishima sweeps his hand under his shirt to rest a hand on his stomach. Blunt nails press into tan, taut skin each time his dick digs into Yamaguchi’s thigh. Yamaguchi waits to ignite. The warmth on his skin through Tsukishima’s shorts, the searing in his abdomen, the blaze of sudden summer afternoons—pure heat washes over him in waves despite the cool splash of moonlight. He wonders if Tsukishima feels him hard against the jut of his hip. Beneath Tsukishima’s fingers, his skin trembles.

It’s only when Tsukishima’s hand flits down to touch him that Yamaguchi realizes how he _aches_ for it, breath ripped from him at the slide of Tsukishima’s fingers over his dick through layers of starchy fabric.

“Fuck,” Tsukishima hisses.

Yamaguchi jerks against him. “Tsukki—”

“Yamaguchi,” he mumbles, panicked, “Yamaguchi.”

Yamaguchi tips his head back to look at him as Tsukishima comes. His lips form around muted words, eyes fluttering shut to hide glowing, gleaming gold. He pulls Yamaguchi along, rocking a final time against Tsukishima’s shaking fingers until the swoop in his stomach combusts to sparkle hotly over his insides. The press of their weight together keeps them from losing form altogether and splashing to the ground, loose and messy.

Yamaguchi thinks it impossible for the sudden drone of crickets to have been there all along.

Gently, they help each other to the grass. It pricks Yamaguchi’s back through his shirt as he lies flat and regards the moon in its first quarter, mobbed by flickering stars. Tsukishima settles by his hip. He doesn't ask for his glasses back. He just pulls his knees up, feet flat on the ground and finds Yamaguchi’s hand where it lies palm-up on the grass between them. A sole touch—Tsukishima presses the pad of his index finger to Yamaguchi’s. All their crags, grooves and ridges snap to fit.

They glow, rivaling the moonlight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> adriana made [art](http://camotechips.tumblr.com/post/157474937006/how-long-can-i-hold-on-when-my-feelings-are) for this chapter, and i'm in love with it.


	10. denouement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> womp womp it's finished

After Tsukishima’s skin, even the leather of a volleyball feels rough under Yamaguchi’s fingers.

Warmth sifts within the gym although the rolling room is light today; airy. A breeze blows freely through as if to convince its company to stay. It feels them leaving. The gym walls bend inward, coddling them.

At the other end of the court, Asahi plants his feet. Nishinoya flits around him like an encouraging firefly, all aglow with endless spirit and quick feet. Asahi’s shoulders slouch with a weighty exhale. His focus sharpens to a fine point, digging into the hardwood beneath him, impressive and dangerous all at once. 

“Okay, Yamaguchi,” he calls. “I promise I’ll get it this time. The third time is the charm, right?”

“Asahi-san, he doesn’t _want_ you to get it. If you get it, he loses.”

“It’s just practice,” Yamaguchi calls back, grinning.

Asahi scoops up his next serve. It smacks off his forearms in a perfect arch.

“Nice, Asahi-san! Now, Yamaguchi, let me try.”

Yamaguchi grabs the ball out of the air. “Nishinoya-san, I really don’t think I’m—”

Nishinoya interrupts, “Yamaguchi, which team has the most impressive receives?”

Yamaguchi holds the volleyball tight against his chest. He turns over his shoulder. On the far court, Kozume and Kuroo talk to one another through the net. Kozume’s hand dangles from it, his fingers curled in black strings. Kuroo sharp features ease as he lifts his hand to mirror him. Yamaguchi turns back to his teammates.

“Nekoma,” he answers dutifully.

“And which team couldn't pick up your awesome float serves yesterday?”

“Nekoma,” he says again, insides aflutter.

“Exactly,” insists Nishinoya. “Now let me try, will you?”

His shoulders rise and fall with the breath Yamaguchi takes in. It twirls around his stomach as he serves again, his palm heavy against the ball, the sound of a thick slap there and gone and an instant. Sparks ricochet inside Yamaguchi as the ball wobbles through the air over their heads. On his side of the court, Nishinoya flares. His focus swells and looms and Yamaguchi feels it brush against him like the warm draft in the gym, making the hair on his arms stand on end.

The ball detaches from its path. It catches Nishinoya’s wrists, spinning from them in the very wrong direction.

Yamaguchi gapes down at his hands.

“Yamaguchi,” Nishinoya shouts, “that was _awesome!”_

Yamaguchi studies the pink of his palm and only looks up when Nishinoya smacks it red—a spirited, electrified high-five. The squeaks and calls of the busy gym fall to a buzz. Yamaguchi feels only the sting in his palm, the gentle grip of Asahi’s hand on his arm, the warmth on his face from Nishinoya’s glowing grin. 

He straightens to accommodate new weight: pride settles sturdily in his shoulders.

_____

  
Players zip up and down the bright, busy halls, bags swinging from sore shoulders. Suzumeda catches Yamaguchi on the staircase landing. She barely has to lean up to hug him around his neck, teetering them back and forth, her ponytail swatting his cheek.

“I hope we play you guys real soon,” she tells him.

“Me too, Suzu. You’re gonna be the greatest manager ever.”

“If I follow Yukie-san,” she boasts, “I can’t possibly be bad.”

They grin at each other, open and sincere. She points at him, her nail polish purple and chipped.

“And if you stop practicing, I’ll walk to Miyagi and—I don’t know—do something threatening.”

“Got it.”

Yamaguchi has never so much considered the distance between Miyagi and Tokyo before now. His friendship with Suzu is light and floaty—a balloon held by its string, and he does not want to watch it float off. He wants to catch it and loop it around his wrist, double-knotted.

“We’ll text each other,” he promises.

Suzumeda nods vehemently. “Freckle twins need to stick together, right?”

_____

  
“Tsukki, the buses are here.”

Tsukishima pauses his meticulous folding to take in a deep breath. Slowly, he lets it out.

“I don’t even want to look at a volleyball,” he says, “for at least a week.”

“We have practice on Monday, Tsukki.”

Tsukishima’s next breath is a sigh. Yamaguchi kneels and runs his palm over the freshly folded t-shirt, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles. The blinding sun invades the empty room through giant windows, desperate to tattoo Tsukishima in reds and pinks one last time like a twisted parting gift. Yamaguchi stands. He steps in front of the beams so his shadow falls over him.

“Tsukki,” barks Bokuto, leaning into the room, “get downstairs or the buses are gonna leave without you!”

Tsukishima blinks at him and Akaashi in the doorway. Yamaguchi stares hard at the stack of t-shirts on the floor.

“You’re not down there,” Tsukishima points out.

“He has a point, Bokuto-san,” notes Akaashi.

Bokuto jolts and cuts down the hall with a shout. Akaashi slinks after him after granting Tsukishima a wave, faintly apologetic in its execution. Karasuno’s borrowed room falls to silence again. Resignation ties a knot in Yamaguchi’s gut. He pulls and pulls at it, but all he gets are blisters. Yamaguchi's eyes fall to his lap.

“Do they ever call you by your actual name?” he asks, his voice jagged at its edges.

Tsukishima smirks. “Do you?”

“That’s…so different.”

“I agree,” he says, lifting his clothes from the floor. He turns from Yamaguchi and kneels to set them in his bag with care. Slowly, he pulls the zipper around its track, the sound of it stretching through the room and mumbles, “I tell them not to.”

Yamaguchi straightens. 

“Kei,” he says firmly.

The word rolls noisily through the room once it drops from Yamaguchi’s mouth. It rumbles across the hardwood like a handful of marbles; its resonance loud and continuous, only coming to a halt once they nudge against the heels of Tsukishima’s shoes. They scatter across the floor when Tsukishima turns.

“What?” he replies.

Yamaguchi’s heart crashes against his ribs, tidal-like.

“Nothing,” he decides. “I forget.”

"Alright," says Tsukishima, lifting his bag onto his shoulder. “Are you ready?”

Yamaguchi reels like he’s gotten away with something. Mutely, he nods. Tsukishima stares at him for a long moment, head tilted like he tries to memorize something specific. He steps closer. His gaze slides somewhere over Yamaguchi’s shoulder as he wraps his fingers around his wrist—the simplest, tenderest touch that whips the waves in Yamaguchi’s chest into wild whorls of hurricane proportions. He clutches him back.

Their hands fall to their sides and Yamaguchi follows him from the room.

But not before he frantically scoops the spinning marbles into his hands; the sound of Tsukishima’s given name and the ease with which it curled sweetly around his tongue. This time, he doesn't pocket a key.

It is the one lock the others will never pick.

_____

  
“I can’t believe it’s over,” Hinata whines, digging his sweaty forehead into Yamaguchi’s shoulder.

Lev gives his back a consoling pat. “It’s okay, Hinata. You learned a lot this week, right? I mean, not as much as me, but still.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The summer sun beams through thin cloud cover. It glints off the buses, stacked in rows across the parking lot. Players stand about in likewise clusters, duffel bags slouching lazily from their shoulders or dropped to the hot ground at their feet. 

“Hinata,” drones Kageyama, “come help me put the bags on the bus.”

Hinata blinks up at him. “What?”

“It’ll cheer you up.”

“Kageyama,” he replies, pained, “I don't think you know what those words mean.”

“Whatever. Come on.”

“I’ll help!” chirps Lev.

Hinata spins on his heel. “Yamaguchi?”

“You guys go ahead.”

The three of them twist their way through the crowd. Yamaguchi idles in their wake. Players chat animatedly at his sides, his teammates and the others, exchanging stories and embellishments and handshakes and hugs and Yamaguchi rolls it around his mouth: the sour taste of leaving Lev, of leaving Suzumeda, of abandoning such electric atmospheres, of waking up to Tsukishima existing miles away instead of feet. Yamaguchi thinks of the disc of moonlight on the surface of the pond, rippled by rising wind and tries to recall if it has ever looked as bright back home. He slides his tongue over the inside of his bottom lip.

Yachi steps to Yamaguchi’s side, fingers clenched anxiously around the thin straps of her backpack. 

“Is Hinata okay?” she wonders.

Despite her nonsensical nerves, Yachi shimmers. Yamaguchi leans her way, a flower bending toward the sun.

“Oh, yeah. He’ll be fine,” Yamaguchi promises.

Clouds rearrange. Sunshine glitters from black asphalt.

“Hey, Yachi-san?”

She lifts her hand to shield her eyes as she looks up at him. “Yeah?”

“Was Suzu right?” he asks. “Are you really proud of us?”

Yamaguchi scans the groups of players littered around the parking lot, at one point just specks and blurs of oases too far off. Now, when Yamaguchi reaches out, his fingertips skim the backs of their shirts. His muscles sear and sizzle with the stretch but he feels the fabric in his hands: crisp, tight, utterly tangible. Shuffling from the underbrush, he tugs himself closer.

“Of course, Yamaguchi-kun,” Yachi insists with fervor, “of course I am. Aren’t you proud of you?”

Yamaguchi looks to Tsukishima where he stands across the lot, accosted by Bokuto and Nishinoya. The string between them shivers, taut but comfortable. Yamaguchi soothes it with his fingertip. Like he feels it, Tsukishima turns to gaze back at him.

“Yeah,” answers Yamaguchi, flourishing under the summer sun. “I really am.”  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't forget to love on [this](http://camotechips.tumblr.com/post/157474937006/how-long-can-i-hold-on-when-my-feelings-are) [art](http://camotechips.tumblr.com/post/156266713961/you-will-be-a-regular-right-lev-supplies) adriana made for the story. she's the greatest human being alive.
> 
> thank you, thank you, thank you for reading.


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